Harry Potter and the Marauding Champions
by NonsensicalRants
Summary: A new generation of Marauder's is born in the second half of the Triwizard Tournament, during a night none of them can remember. The destruction this new generation of pranksters wrought in a drunken stupor set them down a path of greatness. "Messyrs Firebird, TroinSkin, PaddleCul and VoulgeNeb are proud to present, the Marauder's Map, Version 2.0."
1. Chapter 1: Rebirth Under Moonlight

**The Marauding Champions**

* * *

**Chapter 1:**

**Rebirth Under Moonlight**

* * *

Harry struggled with the box of butterbeer as he descended down Gyrffindor tower towards the bridging hallway connecting it to that of Ravenclaw.

The box of refreshments wasn't particularly heavy, it was just awkward to lug around. If only the packers had seen fit to ship them in a proper square container instead of the rectangular baker's dozen.

He'd never fully appreciated how inconvenient some of the tasks needed to open certain doors and passageways in the castle could be until he'd attempted to do a one-armed pull-up on the lever/chandelier on the fifth floor while propping a thirty pound box of glass bottles on his hip. Maybe he just needed to work on his upper body strength? Then again the fact that he could even DO a one armed pull-up despite being weighed down by an additional thirty pounds served as a cogent counterpoint to that idea.

Soon enough he rounded onto the fourth floor and turned down one of the more utilitarian sections of the castle.

In one of the hundred or so storerooms tucked away on the east end was the room that had once contained the Mirror of Erised, most of them now contained food stock and potions ingredients. He wondered why they didn't store them closer to the kitchens and dungeons, respectively, but figured with magic(and house elves) choice of storage place didn't prioritize distance so much as total cubic meters of area.

This evening's jaunt - for once - was not for purposes of mischief, research or stealing potions ingredients. Tonight was a much more relaxing affair and his destination was at the end of the hallway.

He took a deep, steadying breath to calm his nerves when he reached a tapestry overlooking the entire hallway. It depicted a somewhat burly, though in no way unattractive, witch wearing overalls and a straw hat. With one hand she held a pair of sheers, and with the other a freshly picked rose.

Unlike most secret passageways in the school this one was convenient to open. Even moreso than regular doors.

He leaned forward, pressed his nose against the rose and inhaled deeply. Unsurprisingly, it smelled of dusty old fabric, but he let out an even deeper sigh of contentment. That part was important, even if you did have to fake it.

The freckled gardener giggled as her tapestry shimmered and faded into a ghostly mirage, allowing Harry to step through into one of the Hogwarts secret gardens.

The Ravenclaw Rose Retreat, as it was called by those who knew of it, was one of four secluded greenhouses within the castle proper. It was little more than a glass dome at the very top of one of the peripheral towers fused to Ravenclaw tower. Inaccessible from below, and impossible to spot from above, roughly the size of the greenhouse Professor Sprout used for classes.

The copper frame holding the glass panels was obscured by thick morning glory and blueberry vines, blotting out all but the sky directly above. Forming a large circle at the center of the room was a veritable forest of rose bushes, each as tall as a man and every petal the color of a dazzling sapphire. Each of the thornless bushes was nested in a carpet of bronze coral bells.

"Fleur?" He called out when his reason for being there near curfew failed to materialize.

"We are ovar 'ere 'Arry." The French Veela called from somewhere behind the thicket of flowers.

We? When Fleur had asked him if he knew of a quiet, secluded place where they could talk and drink he had expected a private meeting. With just the two of them. As such he struggled to keep a friendly smile on his face when he navigated through the maze of stone benches and turned the corner to find the other male champions there waiting with her.

"Evening Cedric, Viktor. You all three managed to escape from your damsels in distress to join me here?" He greeted his older competitors.

They looked as impressive as ever. Even in their simple school uniforms Fleur was breathtakingly beautiful and Cedric was enviably handsome. Viktor looked like Viktor. No compliment or denigration about his appearance could be made. It was exactly the kind of visage Harry strived for, and one which he assumed the Bulgarian seeker crafted deliberately.

"Indeed. Hermonei vent to sleep against my shoulder at dinner and I had to recruit the girl of Lavender to guide her to her room." Viktor explained.

Harry glanced to Cedric, who didn't need more than the nonverbal cue to add his two cents.

"Cho made it all the way until it was time for me to come meet with ya. She's a trooper. As good a seeker as either of us, and we have stamina to spare after the lake don't we?" Said Cedric as he elbowed Viktor, who smiled politely.

He finally reared on Fleur.

She shrugged cutely with her hands curled in her lap and a smirk tugging at her lips

"Gabrielle did not make eet past lunch. I 'ave been acting as 'er pillow evair since you pulled her from the lake."

With their greetings out of the way, Harry placed the box of butterbeer on the stone bench between the one Fleur and Viktor sat on and the one Cedric had monopolized before plopping down beside the Hufflepuff. On any other day Cedric probably would have stopped by the kitchens on the way there to fill a few picnic baskets with treats, but the feast they all gorged on after completing the second task was still settling. At least it was for Harry.

"And vat of your lovely hostage?" Viktor egged. "The tall, petite redhead. I do appreciate the freckled girls."

Harry snorted in place of dignifying the joke with a response.

"Zho, she does leave much to be desired in ze way of table manners." Fleur added.

This was true. A paragon of table manners Ron was not.

"Ron is soaking up some of the attention from being a hostage, more for my sake than his." Harry finally answered.

He hoped the others would catch his meaning.

"Running interference to save you from suffocating crowds again? Good man." Said Cedric, confirming Harry's hope.

He figured the conversation had gone on long enough and withdrew the knife Sirius had gifted him just two months back. It took more effort than he expected but he eventually managed to slice through the plastic covering of the box and remove the lid to show off his prize.

Twenty crystal bottles of butterbeer gleamed in the fading light from the sunset. Each with an equally dazzling crystal stopper sealed with golden wax.

Viktor let out an impressed whistle.

"How did you manage to get your hands on aged butterbeer?" The Bulgarian seeker asked.

Butterbeer can be aged like wine to make the dairy content sweeter and thicker to drink, almost like whipped cream. The meek alcohol content, and a few added ingredients known only to the makers and likely magical in nature, kept it in a liquid enough state to drink despite being of such a thick constancy.

Needless to say, the stuff is expensive.

"My godfather was originally born to wealth and recently came back into possession of his family estate." Harry told them, leaving out his godfather's identity. "He managed to dig up a lot of beverages from the long abandoned cellar and decided to ship off the "weak stuff" to me. I'm worried the old dog is becoming an alcoholic."

That last bit was more a concern of one Remus Lupin, but one that Harry was beginning to share if the werewolve's stories were to be believed.

Fleur reached in and plucked an emerald green bottle to examine it closely.

"How long have zey been sitting in zat cellar?" She asked.

He wondered for a moment why she would care, after all they only got better with age... Oh.

"About thirteen years. So it's aged by at least that much. I can't promise they're older than us, but they're at least not fresh from the factory." He explained.

Seemingly satisfied with his answer Fleur gripped the crystal stopper and pulled with all her might. Unsurprisingly, the dainty French witch didn't have the strength to uncork it by hand. That didn't stop her from repeatedly trying until her hands and face were flushed red from the effort.

It was all Harry could do to not laugh when Viktor reached over and nonchalantly twisted it open with just the strength in his hand and wrist. Show off.

Fleur, in turn, brought it up to her nose for a whiff, once she stopped glaring at their muscle-bound companion that is.

"Mmm, eggnog. Mon preferee!"

Really? That was his favorite too! At least he thought that's what prefer-whatever meant. So he grabbed one of the green bottles as well while Fleur rummaged around the box in search of something.

"Where are zee glasses?"

Harry did laugh that time.

"Do you not see how many bottles we have here? We don't need glasses. There's enough for each of us to drink one of each color." Harry chided, knowing that this went against her higher breeding and etiquette-centered upbringing, but as with most things posh and proper he didn't much care.

Cedric snapped a red one open and made to take a swig before Harry stopped him by grabbing his arm.

"Constant vigilance!" He told Cedric with a wicked grin before drawing his wand.

Harry then performed a series of diagnostic and detection spells on the bottle in Cedric's hand. It was a series of spells he could now perform by muscle memory alone, having gotten into the habit of using them on all of his belongings this last year. They counted ten in number, but having to repeat them on each of the twenty bottles left his arm and shoulder aching.

"Alright. We're clear. Everyone grab a bottle." He instructed them as he did just that.

"A bit paranoid aren't you?" Cedric complained as he took his first sip.

Harry shook his head bemusedly.

"I have to be careful. The twins have spiked my drinks more times than I can count, but it only took drinking one unprepared to learn my lesson." Harry explained as he took his first sip as well.

"I do not see how zat would be much of a problem. Or can leetle Harry not handle his firewhiskey?"

Harry smiled at the French witch's unapologetic callback to their wretched first interaction. He knew she regretted it, but he'd let her keep her pride.

"It isn't firewhiskey that they spike food and drinks with."

That got their attention. The frightened glances they shared with each other, and increasingly inquisitive glances they threw in Harry's direction, hinted at assumptions far darker than the reality. Harry would have let the impressively erudite nonverbal conversation continue, as it was entertaining in it's own way, but he figured it might sour the mood for the rest of the evening if he didn't correct whatever misconceptions they were undoubtedly inventing by the dozen.

"But none of us have sprouted feathered elf ears, worthog tusks or beaks in place of our noses so I think we'll be just fine."

They looked at each outer again and burst out laughing. He could see why, as he himself was picturing Fleur with such ears, Viktor with such tusks and Cedric with such a nose. The Tolkeinesque ears would suit Fleur beautifully, he decided.

"Who are these twins?" Viktor baritoned. "I vould like to meet them.

"Oh I'm sure you already have. They're hard to miss." Said Cedric. "They're Ronald's older brothers and abnoxious pranksters."

Recognition flooded the eyes of their foreign guests.

"So, what? Do zey go around dosing people's food with potions?"

Harry smiled at Fleur, knowing that there wasn't enough time left in the year for him to tell her about the exploits of the reincarnated Prewitt brothers.

"They do a lot of things. But lately they've been inventing a lot of prank snacks and sweets. They make people real nervous at meal times."

"I can imagine. If it vere me, I vould stand over people I dislike and kindly ask how their food is. Repeatedly." Viktor said with what passed for a mischievous smirk on his dour face.

Harry almost choked on his butterbeer imagining Fred and George doing exactly that to Malfoy.

From there the conversation flowed like the butterbeer. Talks of Quidditch and seeker training gave way to talks of family when the boys realized they were being inconsiderate of Fleur, who hated heights and flying in general.

The silver-haired beauty lit up at the mere mention of her sister. She waxed poetically about the many ways "Leetle Gabby" earned the angelic name their fundamentalist mother had bequeathed her. Harry had to agree. In the few minutes he had spent with the bouncing Veela hatchling she had worked her way into his heart, completely bypassing his skelegrow repaired and hardened ribcage.

He wasn't alone in thinking her laughter was like chick chittering, and when Fleur pointed out that her pouting reminded her of a bird ruffling it's feathers to appear more aggressive and intimidating(but only ever succeeding in looking adorable, much like Gabby) he couldn't help but imagining her throwing a temper tantrum.

He needed to introduce the precious girl to Hedwig. Hopefully he could invite a glaring contest.

Harry found himself cursing the unfairness of biology at the epiphany that the little angel would one day grow up and become a teenage girl. A nasty, mean, vindictive, hairy, vane, boy-obsessed and rude teenager. The injustice of it all!

They nearly dusted through the entire box of butterbeer before the conversations started to fizzle out. Harry himself had managed to go through his own eggnog, cinnamon and a third of the mint flavored butterbeer bottles assigned to him. Cedric and Viktor, the fat bastards that they are, had gone through their amaretto and chocolate ones as well. Fleur had barely finished her eggnog bottle and started on her chocolate flavored one before deciding she had had enough.

"I think your prankster friends may have spiked your butterbeer after all, Harry." Viktor said as he groggily stood up, and nearly fell over from the effort. "That or this batch has a higher than normal alcohol content."

Cedric was stumbling to his feet as well, and Harry had to admit his head was starting to swim in that way he associate with firewhiskey-spiked butterbeer. A sensation he experienced once when he hadn't known what he was drinking. Once had been enough.

"I reckon you might be right." Harry said. "You think we should sit down for an hour and wait for it to wear off before sneaking back to our common rooms?"

Fleur groaned in a very unladylike, but somehow still dignified coming from her, manner.

"It eez already past ze curfew. How are we going to get back unseen?"

Harry had a plan for that. Had, being the operative word, as that plan had been shot to hell when he realized it wasn't just Fleur and himself attending this romantic rendezvous.

"I have an invisibility cloak." He said simply.

"Big enough to, urg..." Cedric tried to ask before a bubbling noise from his stomach interrupted his question.

"No, not big enough for four people." Harry replied, pulling the family heirloom from his school robe's interior. "But definitely big enough for Fleur and me to sneak out and grab something else that'll let you two get where you need to go, undetected."

He was sure Cedric could fit under it with him, but he was in no state to go on a stealth mission into a paranoid ex-auror's office and steal anything. And Viktor sure as hell wouldn't fit inside with him. The massive teenager probably wouldn't fit by himself, now that Harry thought about it.

"And vat is this tool of guile, my friend?"

Harry smiled at the Bulgarian. He could tell them, but he'd rather show them. Then again, there was money to be made in telling them. They would surely not believe him, and wagering a few galleons would make for easy money.

"A map. A map that shows every person, place and thing on the school grounds." Harry told them. "It's called the Maraud..."

* * *

That was it.

That was the last thing Harry could remember from the night before - flashes of fire, lust and roaring laughter notwithstanding.

His inability to recall the rest of his evening was made all the more infuriating by the revelation that Fleur Delacour, garbed in nothing but a thin and VERY transparent pair of skyblue panties, was using him as a body pillow. The two were laying down in the soft underbrush beside the rose bushes and coral bells they had drinken beside the night before. And Harry would have gladly sold his soul and exhumed his own parent's graves before galavanting their reanimated bodies down Diagon alley in exchange for the memories of how he had gotten to be tightly embraced against her bare bosom.

Trying not to panick, Harry took a steadying breath and gently pushed Fleur off of him, or at least he tried to. She clutched onto him painfully with sharp claws and pulled him tighter into her embrace.

Wait... Claws?

Sure enough, where perfectly manicured nails should have been were instead obsidian talons like those belonging to a bird of prey. Crescent blades of death jutting from the charred remains of her hands dug deep into his shoulder and back, drawing blood. They were wretched, an abomination on the perfection that was Fleur Dela- oh wait, nevermind. They were turning back to normal.

He took a slower and even more gentle aproach in prying her fingers off of him the second time. Instead of pushing her aside he sort-of rolled over until she lay on her back with him on top of her. He was certain the position would look pretty bad to an outside observer. Holding her hands against her flat stomach by the wrist he, ever so slowly, pulled away while trying not to stare at her form.

He failed in the latter.

She was perfect. Aside from the blood on her fingertips from where she'd sliced into him moments earlier and the soot on her hands he could not find a single imperfection on the girl's, no, woman's body.

She wasn't well-endowed or shapely, but her small breasts(What comes before A?) and thin figure were beautiful to him all the same as he raked his eyes over her with wanton hunger. Even fast asleep after a night that he knew included drinking in excess and rolling around in dirt together her hair was immaculate, without so much as a single metallic strand out of place. Speaking of hair, there wasn't any to be found on her body save for the enticing patch of silver he could see through the single piece of transparent fabric she wore.

With sudden nervousness Harry realized he was wearing even less and scrambled for the articles of clothing that hung from the rose bushes on either side of them. The lack of pain or other evidence of fornication alleviated Harry's worries that they might have gone too far the night before, if her still partially clothed body wasn't enough to do so. After successfully hiding his body's intention with the wayward pairs of boxers and jeans he threw his own school robe over his peaceful companion like a blanket.

She apparently decided it made as delightful a body pillow as Harry had and snuggled up to it as well.

He searched for the remainder of their clothes and alternated between donning his own and folding hers into a pile for when she woke up. He winced as the rough fabric of Dudley's old sweater irritated the slicing wounds on his back, but was hardened enough by far greater wounds in the past to avoid hissing in pain. It was as he donned his shoes that he discovered a dozen or so metal tubes littered about them along with a few other feminine contraptions.

It didn't take a genius to realize they were lipstick and makeup, but why was each tube opened and discarded like that? And why would she need so many colors?

There were different shades of blues, reds, greens and purples in both glittered and matte varieties. A closer inspection of Fleur's face - which he had somehow bypassed in his first ever experience of seeing a woman's naked body - revealed that she was indeed wearing lipstick. Orange. It looked wrong on her, as makeup in general simply could never add to her appearance, but take away from it.

Except maybe the navy blue one with silver glitter. He could imagine that looking damn sexy on her.

A sudden sneaking suspicion took Harry over and he snatched up one of those makeup clasps with the mirrors inside and opened it.

The good news was they had not spent the night putting makeup and lipstick on him. The bad news was his entire face was now an abstract, rainbow-colored portrait of kiss marks. Putting two and two together, Harry realized the night had gone even better than he had dared hope.

His cheeks were starting to hurt from smiling so wide.

Deciding it was likely Fleur wouldn't remember the night before either, and figuring she would be much less thrilled than he was, Harry scrambled out of the bed of rose petals they must have made for themselves and out into the greenhouse.

He soon found Viktor passed out on a stone bench on one end of the room and Cedric tied up against the wall on the other. He had made the mistake of falling asleep near a magical vining plant, so naturally the morning glories grapevines had grown to completely envelop him, though had been conscientious enough to leave his head unaccosted.

It was probably best not to leave him there.

Peeking back into the bower where Fleur snoozed cutely, Harry searched for his wand as quietly as he could manage. He found Fleur's in the bushes beside her and figured his must have been in the robes she was currently holding onto for dear life. He was still in pain from the last time he tried to pry something away from a sleeping Veela and was reticent to relive the experience anytime soon.

The rosewood wand was hot in his hands, like wood left in a sauna, to the point it was uncomfortable to hold. He got the distinct impression that the wand didn't want him holding it. With a few waves of it he managed to cut Cedric down from his vertical hammock. In his drowsiness Harry had forgotten to make proper use of cushioning and lightening charms in anticipation of the Hufflepuff champion falling flat on his face.

"Owe! What the bloody hell?!"

Oh. So the golden boy could get angry. Neat.

"Morning. Rough night?" Harry asked, offering Cedric his arm.

Together they managed to get him to his feet and brush off the remaining leaves and vines from his person

"I... Can't rightly recall." Cedric admitted, roughly running his hands through his hair.

Damn. Well there goes Harry's hope of bribing the others into giving him pensieve memories of the night before. He wondered at the chances of sneaking out and back to Gryffindor tower before Fleur woke up, maybe exchange hostage wands at a later date when she cooled down.

"Ello?" Bollocks. "What 'appened?"

Harry's back was turned to the rose bushes, but somehow the fearfullness in her voice made him feel so much worse than the anger he had been anticipating. She sounded on the verge of tears.

He turned around to look at her.

Whatever expression she was wearing before melted away and in its place was the guiltiest smile he had ever seen.

"Oh. I zee." She said as she covered her mouth and nose with a hand.

This was not the reaction Harry had expected.

She handed him his robes while muttering what he assumed were a string of excuses and apologies in French. He, in turn, handed her wand back. Oddly enough, he could feel it almost protest at leaving him. It was as if the magic inside the wand was clinging to that within his body in the same way Fleur had clung to him earlier.

Temperamental indeed.

"You don't seem all that upset." Harry said nervously as Cedric left them to go and rouse Viktor.

She was back in her school uniform now and he couldn't help but miss the view from earlier.

"Why would I be 'Arry?" Asked Fleur, her guilty smile getting even guiltier. "I am zee adult, whatever 'appened last night is my responsibility."

He saddened a bit at the implied reminder of his age.

"I must say zho, I am glad I did not do anything naughty wiz someone I had not planned to."

Whatever dredges of sleep still infected his body left him in that moment. Is this what people referred to as an emotional rollercoaster? Seemed like an appropriate name.

"Zho, it saddens me zat I do not remember eet."

Damn. Well, fourth times a charm.

"Hey Vik!" Harry yelled at the man leaning against Cedric on the other side of the room.

"Vhat!"

"Do you remember anything from last night?"

"No!"

"Alright thanks! Well I geuss we'll never know for sure." Harry said, going from yelling at the clearly hungover Hungarian to whispering to the fraternizing Frenchie without skipping a beat. "But I'm sure I enjoyed the kisses."

She actually giggled at that. Harry didn't know she could make such a sound. It was nice.

"Ooh. Speaking of, I meesed a spot."

And like that she leaned down and planted one final kiss on the bridge of his nose. When she pulled away her lips had gone from the vibrant orange back to the pale pink they were supposed to be.

"You know, Muggles sell lipstick that doesn't smear, right?"

She gave him a dazzling smile.

"Zey are charmed to never smear UNLESS you kees someone. Very popular brand, zey are."

Hmm. Made sense. Lipstick for recreation and presentation. For not the first time in his life Harry marveled at the literal mountains of money wizardkind was sitting on by not marketing their products to Muggles.

Sometime during their talk they had started holding hands and by now their fellow champions had joined them.

"You are not allowed to bring drink or food ever again, Harry." Viktor grumbled. "Vhat in the hell did you give us?"

Harry did his best impression of Fleur's guilty smile.

"I'm caught between killing Gred and Forge when I get back, or leaving everything in my will to them." Harry said. "On the bright side it looks like we didn't get into trouble last night. It'll be easier to act like we never snuck out at all."

Cedric hummed in agreement.

"I am about ready for breakfast. And I think I speak for Viktor too when I say coffee would help a lot."

Viktor nodded enthusiastically before wincing and rubbing his forehead. "I don't suppose you could have some delivered here, could you?"

Harry considered it.

"You know what. I reckon I could. Dobby?"

He heard two soft pops and when he looked over at the benches they had occupied last night there sat a tray loaded with a large, white mug and four coffee cups. Beside it was another tray loaded with flaky pastries.

"Do you guys ever get the feeling you're being watched?" Harry laughed as he helped Cedric lead Viktor towards the smell of salvation.

They devoured the pastries and inhaled the coffee in silence, save for the grunts and moans of satisfaction at the private breakfast.

"So. Did you actually go get this map or do you owe us ten galleons?" Cedric prodded.

Ten? He had only wagered ten galleons on a guaranteed win? Damnit drunk Harry!

"I don't remember. Last I recall is getting ready to tell you guys about the Marauder's map "

He looked to Fleur.

"I do not know. I remember you mentioning a cloak, but zen..."

She was interrupted by Viktor holding up a large, folded piece of parchment in Harry's face. He could feel his face lighting up and then darkening again as he examined it.

"This isn't it." Harry bemoaned as he took the parchment.

It was too clean, too new to be the one made by Sirius and his friends. Despite this, the resemblance was uncanny. It was the exact same shape and folded in the exact same way. Maybe it WAS the map but they had thought to bleach and iron it the night before?

"Meh. Why the hell not?" Harry shrugged as he tapped the parchment with his wand. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

And the map materialized. Ink stretching across the paper like vining plants that looped back in on themselves to reveal the same bold pronouncement he had seen play out a million times before. Or maybe not.

_Messyr's FireBird, TrionSkin, PaddleCul and VoulgeNeb are proud to present:_

_The Marauder's Map, Version 2.0_

_Durmstrang Edition_

Harry could only stare dumbly at the map.

Who, who, who and who?

* * *

**Elsewhere**:

* * *

Igor Karkaroff, Reformed Death Eater and Headmaster of Durmstrang Institute of Sorcery, was having a very good morning.

He had woken up with time to spare and without the many body aches brought on by age and the lifelong after-effects of the nastier curses he had suffered in service of a dark lord long ago. Both tended to ebb and flow, flaring up and calming down as they pleased.

If that wasn't enough the birds of Britain were singing an especially fine tune this morning and the house elfs had prepared a pine-tree and honey tea for him, piping hot instead of the luke warm it usually fell to when he slept in.

Cup in hand, he made his way from the captains cabin down a small flight of stairs to the door that opened directly from his private quarters to the ship deck.

The morning air was brisk, a shock of cold, though not as frigid as he was accustomed to. Though he could have done without the tree branch slapping him in the face.

That was when his morning took a turn to the strange.

Instead of the slightly salty smell of the black lake and clear horizon his nose was assaulted with the, admittedly pleasant but unexpected, smell of damp leaves, old wood and coniferous trees. When his vision finally adjusted from the artificial darkness of his cabin the reason for the strange olfactory sensations became evident.

The Durmstrang ship was moored.

This wouldn't have been particularly strange if it was moored on the beach of the black lake, but to be surrounded on all side by towering trees so thick they almost blotted out the light was an impossibility. Almost as great an impossibility as the ship finding itself on top of a mountain surrounded by several other mountains.

Above the peaks of another mountain in the distance he could barely make out, through the throng of branches, the highest towers of Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Igor did what any responsible headmaster of Europe's finest magical institution would do. He turned around, stomped back into his cabin, discarded his morning tea, crawled back into bed and went straight to sleep.

It was too early to deal with this shit.

* * *

**Notes:**

This story was partially inspired by the story **"It's Always Hazy at Hogwarts"**** by TurtlePig **which you will absolutely love if you enjoyed this first chapter. In it, the four champions smoke gillyweed in the prefects bathroom and get higher than the moon.

It was further inspired by the severe lack of stories revving around all four champions, or even the three surviving ones. I would know, I searched through all of them and so far the best one I've read was about the survivors getting tattooed to remember Cedric. Come on people, write more will ya?


	2. Chapter 2: Headmaster Woes(Rewritten)

**The Marauding Champions**

* * *

**Chapter 2:**

**Headmaster Woes**

**(Note: I have heavily edited and added to this chapter. If you read the previous version, then I'm sorry to say you need to re-read it now.)**

* * *

One of the great joys that comes with age is the transition all must go through where they cease to care about making themselves presentable. This opens up an entire new world of wardrobe possibilities bearing never before imagined comfort.

Pyjamas, underwear and socks - especially socks - of the softest cotton and fleece made up the majority of Albus' clothes. Even his most extravagant and bizarre robes had an internal lining of fleece enchanted to be even softer than when fresh out of Muggle factories. With the added benefit of cooling charms he was practically wrapped in a laundry pile of blankets even in the throngs of the most blistering summer.

Yes. In these ways life becomes all the more excellent with age, as if father time is making up for the many things he takes from you along the way.

Today, Albus Dumbledore had planned to test out several new items of interest. Namely, a new item of foot apparel and a new breakfast goody.

Unfortunately, what he thought to be socks were in fact some kind of running shoe so form-fitting that they looked to be painted on. They were rather snug, and comfortable in their own way, so the aged headmaster of Hogwarts took to walking forwards, backwards and side to side in his sleeping quarters until he felt relatively accustomed to them.

He decided to challenge himself and try to get through the whole day wearing these so-called minimalist shoes. Indeed, he was dying to go outside and walk in the grass with them. Perhaps he should cast an illusion to make them appear like his normal, less-bizarre but still rather striking, boots.

It would make for a good challenge of concentration and durability, at the very least.

With that new experience out of the way it was time for breakfast, and oh boy did he manage to find the most interesting food.

Once a week he'd make his way to a Muggle store and browse through the foods looking for something new and exciting. He would usually restrict himself to the confectionary aisle, but occasionally branch out to trying chips, soda's and frozen dinners. He'd even tried one of those energy drinks once.

It had very nearly killed him.

This week he'd taken a stroll down the breakfast aisle and marveled at the world of cereals that could pass for desserts. He had opened each and every box to take in the smell, and by smell alone he picked out this week's breakfast. He, of course, made sure to repair the damage to the packages he'd opened before paying for the three boxes now sat on his breakfast table.

Fruity pebbles.

Merlin almighty! What divine being invented these? They smelled like heaven itself had crawled into his sinus cavity and set up temporary residence therein whenever he took a whiff.

He still had time to wait for his morning newspapers to arrive so Albus had to wait before actually digging in. Not the Prophet, he doesn't read those until the "official" breakfast in the great hall. Nay, his real breakfast is a peaceful time, accentuated by Quibbler ridiculousness and Marmaduke comics.

It should be arriving any moment, but until then he busied himself by separating the colorful "pebbles" by color and filling his bowl with the yellow ones. Presumably, i.e hopefully, they would be lemon flavored.

He was all but ready to pour the thick goats milk Aberforth had sent over the other day when a plain-looking barn owl came in through a round skylight in the ceiling above his head. He had barely grasped the pair of magazines in his hands when another bird came in and landed beside it.

Albus could only stare at the beautiful creature. At first glance he thought it a swan of the purest white, the minor peppering of black only serving as an accent. But the sharp beak and gold, intelligent eyes, to say nothing of the long, roping feathers cascading from her back like drapes, revealed her true identity.

"You're a phoenix!" He gasped just above a whisper.

And what a unique Phoenix she was! In all his research and hands-on study of the creatures he had never known them to come in any color outside of the gold and red combination he and those of his former school house love so much. This one certainly wasn't an albino, it lacked the pink iris' that came with such a genetic abnormality.

What's more it was very obviously female, if the shorter length of her tail feathers were any indication. It had long been theorized that the Phoenix's were artificially created by ancient wizards using peacocks as a base, and this indication of sexual dimorphism would certainly add credence to this theory.

His breakfast plans now thoroughly forgotten, Albus put out his arm for the bird and she graciously perched onto it. He made haste for the door to his office hoping to compare his fiery phoenix to this snowy variety.

Could it perhaps have magical abilities wholly different from the creature of fire beside his desk? Could it transport people in bursts of ice and snow? What miracle of healing and medicine would come from extracting her tears? Was she in season and visiting his office in search of a mate in his handsome companion? How could that be when it was widely known that the number of phoenixes in the world had remained consistent since they first appeared? What of her tail feathers? Would they make wands with new and strange properties?

He must find out!

Making his way to the bookshelf that served as a secret passage he browsed for his copy of Jean Wilder's Young Frankenstein, novelized edition, and pulled it from the shelf. He was a sucker for the classics and thewith the book's removal the entire shelf parted to give passage to his office.(The candle opens his bathroom.)

And there, sitting on his perch was Fawkes... Naked.

"F-F-Fawkes!"

He leaped down the steps from his desk to his sad friend.

The plucked bird turned his back on him in shame, letting out a miserable trill as it shivered from the cold. Even as a reborn chick after a burning day, Fawkes had never been so completely bare as to be mistaken for a blob of black and grey.

Who? Who would do such a wretched thing to a creature as pure and beautiful as a phoenix? This went even beyond the of horn-hunters who tranquillize unicorns and leave them to live the rest of their lives bereft of their magical gifts.

As he caught sight of the white pheonix's backside he spotted a speck of red and gold in the bush of white. He plucked it, and before his very eyes the snowy phoenix shrank and morphed into a snowy owl.

Hedwig barked once in annoyance before taking her leave by flying out through his office window.

He let go of the feather he'd pulled from the bird and watched as it zipped a beeline to his own avian friend where it lodged itself back into the scaly skin of his neck.

A sneaking suspicion wound it's way under the hesdmasters skin, a suspicion that beckoned him to the window where he gazed out at the roofs of Hogwarts Castle. All along the buttresses, crockets and finials were perched an endless sea of phoenixes. A phoenix of every size and color, each clearly annoyed and looking to him for help, and each liable to hail from the school owlery.

Albus ground his teeth; a habit he had thought broken some fifteen years earlier when he last woke to a scene as impossible as this.

There was only one group, one entity, capable of doing this. Of so casually breaking well-established laws of magic, indeed probably unknowingly, just for the purpose of ruining his morning.

To pull this off, somebody would have had to break into his office, plucked every feather from Fawkes(A bird capable of escaping any situation in a burst of flame.), taken them to the owlery to use for temporarily transfiguring the owls there into actual phoenixes(Despite zoological to magizoological transfigurations thought hitherto impossible.), and all without him noticing.(No.)

As loath as he was to admit it, the ancient enemy and counterweight to the power wielded by the Hogwarts faculty had returned. An organization reborn every generation since the school's founding, one foolishly hoped gone forever.

"Marauders..." Dumbledore all but snarled, still grinding his teeth.

He needed to warn the other. Unfortunately, whoever de-feathered Fawks saw fit to steal the portraits of his many contemporaries, so he'd have to find another way to get the word out.

* * *

Harry, Fleur, Cedric and Viktor sat around the so-called New and Improved Marauder's Map.

It wasn't a particularly good map, if Harry were to be completely honest. It showed very little of the castle ; displaying most of the grand staircase, a bit of the third floor corridor and Dumbledore's office, the path from the grand staircase to the owlery, the path from the staircase to the Rose Retreat, the path to the Gryffindor common room and some of the school grounds.

It didn't even bear marks or names for the people walking around.

"I thought you said the map showed all of Hogwarts." Cedric pointed out.

Harry shook his head. "This isn't the map."

He then had the bright idea to fish through the pockets of his own robes and found the original, Along with another new white one.

The others repeated his action and soon enough the quartet was sitting around no fewer than five Marauder Maps, a mountain of empty candy wrappers, one jet-blue glass eye, several unmarked and half-fill potion vials as well as two invisibility cloaks.

They all shared a series of concerned glances. The clues to their late night activities were starting to paint a frightening picture.

They all drew out their wands and repeated the infamous oath on the four new pieces of parchment.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

As the words echoed through the greenhouse each of the maps activated.

The original in Harry's hand worked as originally designed, whereas Fleur's displayed the four new names and the distinction of being the Bauxbaton edition. Harry's newer parchment, which Krum had co-opted, declared itself the Hogwarts edition and Cedric's -

"Mom edition?" Harry read aloud with incredulity.

Cedric shrugged. "Ministry of Magic?"

Harry nodded. The suggestion made sense.

"But zen why do all of ze maps show 'ogwarts? And so very leetle of eet." Fleur pointed out.

And indeed they all mapped out exactly the same areas as Viktor's. Wouldn't you expect the Durmstrang and Bauxbaton editions to show, you know, Durmstrang and Bauxbatons?

"Switch."

They all turned to Cedric who had touched a corner of his own map and all of the ink, save for the introduction, vanished into pure white parchment.

They all leaned over to see the part of it he had tapped to find it occupied by four rectangular spaces. Each rectangle bore the name of one of the four institutions. Cedric's had M.O.M in the topmost rectangle, Harry's had Hogwarts, Viktor's Durmstrang and Fleur's Bauxbatons.

They all repeated Cedric's action and switched between the locations. Each time they need the rectangle they indicated became bolder, but all were blank save for the incomplete map of Hogwarts. Though, on closer inspection Fleur's did show the interior for the Bauxbaton's carriage and Viktors the Durmstrang ship. They were rather small illustrations so they could be forgiven for taking so long to spot them

"I zink I 'ave figured out what we deed last night." Fleur broached.

They all motioned for her to explain, even though Harry was pretty sure he had a similar idea.

"I propose 'arry and I sneaked to professor Moody's office, where we retrieved ze map and stole his eye, returned here where ze four of us attempted to, how you say, reverse ze map."

"Reverse engineer?" Harry said.

"Oui! Zat."

Those were Harry's thoughts exactly. And obviously their attempts failed, or were incomplete by the time they passed out the night before. That still didn't explain a few things though.

"Vere did the other cloak come from, then?" Viktor asked.

"Probably also from Moody's office." Said Cedric, lifting the soft fabric from the floor. "If any of the teachers owned one, it'd be him."

"And the method to what parts of the castle we bothered to map out?" Harry asked.

Cedric shrugged.

"I think they're just the routes to important places. This here is Dumbledore's office." He said, pointing at the spot on the third floor before moving his finger to the school grounds and lake. "The Bauxbatons carriage is here, and the Durmstrang ship is there."

Harry and Viktor nodded, but Fleur disagreed.

"Mmm. I do not zink so." She said, shaking her magnificant head. " We would not have inked zis by 'and. Were I to help make zis map, and I zink I did, I would have placed tracking charms on the maps and enchanted zem to fill in ze dimensions as we physically explore."

That made a bit more sense.

"I think Dudley has a computer game that does that."

"What's a computer game?" All three of his wizard-raised companions asked?

Harry sighed in exasperation. The ignorance wizard-raised people had towards the Muggle world astonished him sometimes. He had to get this back on track.

"But that would mean this map displays exactly where we explored last night. Did we really have enough time to explore all of this area even after sneaking into Moody's office and studying the original?" Harry pointed out. "Just making these would have taken us hours."

"Ve need not have explored as a group." Viktor countered. "I bet anything ven one map adds a new area, the others are updated as vell."

That was... plausible.

"So, after reverse-engineering the map, some of us went back to Moody's office, someone went to the owlery, someone explored the grounds, someone went up to Gryffindor Tower and someone went to Dunbledore's office?"

The others nodded. Several, if not all, of them must have gone to multiple places. Sadly, the map didn't indicate the order of places visited, but they were definitely onto something here. It was as he was contemplating what paths might have been taken when his edition turned a vibrant pink.

"What the hell!"

Fleur waved her wand to dispel the color-changing charm she had used on her own map. As it returned to white so did the others.

"Well, zat confirms your theory Veektor." Said Fleur. "Changes made to one map are made to all."

Cedric rent the air with the sound of tearing paper and Harry turned to him in time to see his edition of the map knitting itself back together. He noted that the other maps did not mirror this damage.

"Only magical alterations it seems, and in-built self-repairing enchantments. Neat!" The Hufflepuff seeker announced.

After that they threw restraint to wind and tested the map for EVERYTHING.

Harry couldn't resist testing it's abilities to insult people who didn't know the pass phrase, and wasn't disappointed. Fleur attempted to transfigure her parchment and discovered that they were resistant to being altered in such a way. Cedric charmed his into every color imaginable, altered it's weight and testing summoning charms on his while Viktor tested his version's ability to repair itself from different types of damage, from slight burns to water damage.

It was when Viktor decided to start hurling curses at his map, curses that somehow translated to the other editions to strike the person holding one, that they decided they should put the kibosh on that.

"Ow wong unwil I can fweel my tongue again?" Cedric asked after Viktor reversed the Russian neck-tie curse.

Viktor shrugged. "An hour? Maybe two."

"Fanks affhole."

That concluded their testing of the maps. With a series of "mischief managed" they returned the maps to normal and pocketed them.

"Vat should be do vith the eye and cloak?"

That was a good question. None of them wanted to risk being caught with either. It would be pretty damning. In the end, Fleur opted to wrap them in some spare parchment and bury then beneath the rose bushes. They'd figure out what to do about them later.

"The only mystery that leaves are these vials." Harry said as he lifted one and examined it.

It was a dark blue in color with a slightly white sheen, as if reflecting moonlight.

"I eemagine eet is a potion." Fleur offered.

"Rather astute of you." Viktor deadpanned.

Fleur scowled at the Bulgarian.

"But a potion for what? It looks like we already drank half of each, so the vials would be two doses?" Harry rationalized.

"Maybe it is a notice-me-not potion?" Viktor offered. "They're the only thing that comes to my mind for something ve vould have used last night."

"Are they normally this color?" Harry asked.

"I vould not know. I have only heard of them. Very rare, very powerful and VERY illegal. Not just for their criminal uses, but because if brewed incorrectly it could leave a person unnoticeable for the rest of their lives." Viktor deflected.

Cedric kept his silence, which was probably for the best since he was doubtful to be understood. This is why Fleur's silence was all the more conspicuous.

"Fleur?" Harry asked suspiciously

She was staring at her still-charred hands with deep consternation, but glanced between her peers almost fearfully when Harry said her name.

"I am a quarter-Veela." She said simply.

Harry fought a snicker at the 'revelation' but listened on all the same.

"Part-Veela only inherit zee allure. It eez the full Veela, a woman born with an x chromosome from both parents of Veela descent, that can transform." She explained.

As she said this she allowed her hand to extend back into the sickly black talons that had grasped Harry so roughly just earlier that morning. He half-expected balls of fire to erupt from her now clawed fingertips, but only saw the air distortion from heat radiating from them.

"And yet, I can do zis!" She exclaimed. "How?"

Harry came to the same conclusion she must have come to, that whatever this potion was it had allowed her to transform just as those cheerleaders at the world cup had. But then what could do that?

"I fwink I know." Cedric tried to say, barely legible. "Harry, wha wush shu weashon for she owed mawauders names?"

Harry parsed his meaning as the Hufflepuff pointed to the original map.

"Oh. Um. It's a long story." He pre-empted. "Moony was a werewolf, and his three friends found out. They were apparently retarted because they decided to become animagi so they could keep him company on the full moon."

And then it clicked. He knew what it was, but couldn't believe they would be stupid enough to go through with it, even while drunk.

It was a potion that Harry was certain he could have gotten his hands on by taking a quick trip to Hogsmeade, where a surviving member of the Marauder's was staying. Remus had warned him that Sirius held a secret hope that he, Ron and Hermione would someday come and ask to be inducted. He had warned that Sirius had started brewing this very potion the day after his escape on buckbeak and planned to gift it to them for Christmas, and would have were it not for Remus putting a stop to it.

Lupin made Harry swear to never ask, to never try and pursue his godfather's dream, and yet he had broken that promise last night. He had visited Padfoot's cave and asked the question Harry knew Sirius had been dreaming of since that night in the shrieking shack.

"These are forced animagi potions." He told them, clenching his teeth in self-loathing. "They force the drinker, rather painfully, into their animal form. It's fatal to drinkers who don't have animagi forms(most people) and excruciating to those who do, so it's banned internatonally. Anybody with any sense goes through the much longer process of discovering their form."

He turned to Fleur, trying to will her to feel how remorseful he was telepathically.

"Apparently it makes part-Veela regain the ability to... Well, that." He finished, indicating her hands.

She hid them beneath her arms and gave a meek saw.

"Ne ne ne, none of that!" Viktor bellowed before she could really let the waterworks fall. "This is a blessing, and I vill not have you pitying yourself, Firebird."

She didn't perk up until she heard the name at the end, and Harry felt himself perk up with her.

"Right! The new Marauder names! It's us!" Harry suddenly realized, feeling rather stupid for taking so long to figure that one out.

He turned to his copy of the new and improved Marauder's map and activated it.

"Firebird." He said, pointing at Fleur. "Trionskin.."

"That vould be me." Viktor interrupted.

"What makes you so sure?" Harry asked him.

"Trion means saw in Bulgarian." He said simply.

Harry shared a confused glance with Cedric and Fleur, they both shrugged.

"Saw-skin?" Viktor ebbed them on while making some motion at himself.

The trio shrugged again.

"A shark! Ebasi!" Viktor said, throwing his arms up in exacerbation.

"Oooooh!" Harry echoed with understanding."But that leaves Paddlecul -" Fleur giggled at the name. " - and Voulgeneb, but who is who?"

Harry motioned between himself and Cedric. There was a rather simple way to figure out who was which name, take the potion AGAIN and see who fits which name, but Harry would rather not have to relearn the painful way what his form was. He rather liked the idea of not having to remember taking it last night, but they hadn't seen fit to properly log the information in a journal.

"Something with a paddle for a, well, whatever a cul is-" Fleur giggled again. " - and something with a nose shaped like a voulge. Isnt that a type of spear?" Harry reasoned, ignoring his sort-of-girlfriend's childish antics.

When Cedric nodded at his question Harry went on. "Well, of the two of us I'd like to think I'm more at home in the air so your animal form must have a paddle for a cul. Now if Firebird can stop giggling long enough to tell us what cul means we can move on."

She was smirking from ear to ear and blushing slightly, but obliged.

"Eet means fanny." She said.

"Fanny? I don't..." Viktor started with his "I need an English lesson" voice but Harry beat him to it.

"It's a beaver." He explained. "It's the only thing that has a paddle for a butt. And I think it matches a hard-worker like Cedric rather well."

Cedric shrugged and nodded, apparently happy with the news.

"It could also be the platypus." Viktor offered, sounding almost defensive as he did so. "Do not discount the noble platypus."

Harry, Fleur and Cedric guffawed at the suggestion and he got even sulkier than usual.

"Everyone discounts the noble platypus." Viktor grumbled as he crossed his arms.

Harry decided to ignore his friend's antics and moved on.

"So what kind of bird has a beak shaped like a voulge?" He asked Fleur specifically, seeing as Cedric could not speak.

Fleur frowned and took to appraising him like a piece of art. Harry supposed that if anybody could see into his soul and describe it's shape, she was his best bet at the moment.

"I like to think you are a 'andsome 'awk." She said as she lightly ruffled his still bedraggled hair.

"E does wike oo fwy fwast." Cedric added, helpfully.

Right! And hawks are the fastest flyers in the world, if he remembered right. But that still didn't add up.

"No, Hawks don't have beaks in that kind of shape. They're hooked. And they're birds of prey, which I don't think suits me." Harry countered.

They quickly gave up on any hope of figuring out what kind of bird he could be without a reference book handy, and no-one was willing to force-feed him the potion. And so heyt said their goodbyes and went their separate ways.

They all had places to be.

* * *

Harry was looking forward to the long, hot shower that awaited him in Gryffindor tower. So preoccupied with anticipation was he that he absent-mindedly said the password for the portrait and continued walking... straight into a stone wall.

Rubbing his nose, Harry looked up to discover that the fat lady portrait was gone. Frame and all.

It didn't take the boy-who-lived very long to guess exactly who had removed her from her resting place. After all, there were only four suspects. A shame none of them would be able to locate her due to their minor amnesia.

He was still under his invisible cloak, as he didn't want anybody to see him with a face covered in vibrant kiss marks. He could conceivably sneak into another common room. The Slytherin entrance would open for any parseltongue, even without the password, and neither Ravenclaw nor Hufflepuff even used password.

But all three of those options required a long walk and Harry didn't want to have one of those right now. And so he did what any desperate Gryffindor would do, and as many had done before.

He walked into the nearest abandoned classroom, climbed through the window and shimmied along the ledge that lead all the way to the dorms.

He himself had done this exact same thing once before, but he had been twelve then and the ledge had been much wider in proportion to him at the time.

"Okay Harry. Deep breaths." He muttered to himself as he went along. It quickly became a mantra as he repeated it some dozen times.

Eventually his path was blocked by an obstacle that was easily circumvented two years earlier, but now proved impassable. A small arch growing from the wall that he was now too tall to duck under. The edges were smooth and he had no chance of getting a grip to climb across.

The wind was blistering cold and he needed to get around it to reach the boys dorms. But then again, there was a window to the girls dorm not three feet from him.

... Should he?

He was still garbed in an invisibility cloak, and with two spells he could silence the window and put a wind barrier on it so as not to wake any of the girls. He could totally pull off sneaking through, out to the common room and up to the boys dorms. Yeah!

Steps one through three of his plan were executed flawlessly as he cast the two spells on the lowermost window and crawled through. Step four hit a bit of a snag.

You see, the dorms are organized by year, with the bottommost being seventh years and a few sixth years who were of age and the topmost being filled with first years. This was so that if Hogwarts was ever invaded, then the youngest among them would be most protected. So you'd think Harry would be more at risk of being caught by the most advanced witches of the school, but that wasn't what stopped him in his tracks.

No, the real issue here was that the seventh year dorm was an utter pig sty.

Clothes, makeup, perfume bottles, trash, hair products, strange creams and - ehem - _feminen hygeine products_ littered every solid surface. There was not an inch of free space on any of their desks or dressers, nor an inch of visible floor beneath the mountains of clothes.

Fortunately it didn't smell particularly bad, but that was more due to the cacophony of perfume barely masking the odor he could detect just beneath the surface.

Harry knew that with every step he took, he risked stepping on an unseen cat. And that would certainly cause enough raucous to wake up the softly snoozing beauties surrounding him.

Keeping his eyes on the floor instead of Angelina's bare legs and nearly transparent nightgown was difficult enough without his discovery that her yearmate to Harry's other side liked to sleep in the nude. And apparently hated sheets. And didn't care to close the curtains on her four-poster bed. And was STACKED!

No! Focus! Stupid, sexy upperclasswomen and their nudist ways.

Through strength of will alone he eventually made it to the door, silenced it and snuck out. He was nearly to the stairs leading down to the common room when he passed the open door to the communal shower.

If he thought the girls dorm room was disgusting, well, let's just say his bar for what counted as filthy was raised(Or maybe lowered?) somewhat by the sight of the girls showers. He needed to get out of there!

He reached the top of the stairs and groaned. The common room was already full of people trying to get through the now non-existent portrait hole. It would be a challenge to sneak past them but what other option did he have? Risk jumping the distance from the girls patio to the boys patio and break his neck in the process?

He could sneak back into the girls dorm, exit through a different window and continue shimmying along the ledge to the boys dorm.

Nah. Too tired.

He took the first step down the stairs and didn't get the chance to take a second as the air was rent with an ear-splitting scream. Before Harry could figure out the source the steps beneath him vanished, turning the stairs into a slide that sent him tumbling down.

He landed, exposed, at the feet of his best friend with the entire Gryffindor population minus Owl and Newt students.(They slept in).

Now, most people would assume the teenaged boy tumbling down from the girls dorms in an invisibility cloak had been attempting to sneak up. The collage of vibrant kiss marks on his face, and widening grins and burst of giggles from those who were currently examining him, told Harry that a rather different assumption would fill today's rumors.

"Er, hi Ron" Said Harry as he ignored a snickering Lavender Brown and the gaggle of her younger counterparts. "I don't suppose there's any chance I can convince you all that this doesn't look the way it looks?"

Ronald Weasley dignified Harry with a sympathetic smile and slowly shook his head.

"Yeah. Didn't think so. It's gonna be one of those days, huh?"

Ronald Weasley dignified Harry with a sympathetic smile and slowly _nodded_ his head.

With the benefit of hindsight, Harry realized that he should have simply summoned his Firebolt and flown to his dormitory window.

* * *

Madame Maxime Olympe had expected to have a peaceful and relaxing Saturday.

Her normal routine of rolling out of bed, walking to the bathroom and having her morning tinkle was rudely interrupted when she reached for a handle only to have her fingers brush coarse fabric. Rubbing the last dredges of sleep from her eyes she returned to the task at hand and fixed her most heated glare at the fool blocking her path.

"Pashhhwooord?" The morbidly obese woman slurred, waving an empty bottle of wine about.

Olymbe scowled at the lack of propriety and all-around absurdity of the situation.

"I am ze 'eadmistress of zis establishment, and I insist you allow me through!" She demanded.

The fat, gaudy woman blew a raspberry in lieu of an answer.

"Why I never!" Olympe scoffed at the unladylike behavior.

She decided it was too early to deal with this and made to exit her private quarters in search of the public lavatory, only to be blocked by yet another portrait.

"Have at thee, foul heartbreaker!" The highly energetic knight challenged as he brandished a hefty sword at her.

Whichever order trained this sad excuse of a knight clearly failed to impart the proper discipline and behavioral norms of chivalry. Pointing a greatsword at a lady? Honestly!

"Oo are you!?" Olympe demanded again.

"Sir Cardigan! Noble knight, here to lay anguish upon the wretch who dared to toy with the heart of a man so pure and full of love as our dear Rubeus!"

Olympe could only scoff at the absurdity of such a statement.

"And whenever deed I do such a zing to zat oaf?!" She screeched.

"Oaf!" A third intruder screeched in return, and Olympe whirled to see that the third wall to her private quarters was covered from end to end in a tapestry.

On this tapestry was a party of women from every race, both human and demi-human. A dignified Countess stood shoulder to shoulder with a negro girl attendant**(A.N-1)**, a Cherokee chieftain's daughter and kimino-laden Geisha from the far East. To either side of this queartet were women of more magical origin, a fully enraged Veela beside a glass tank out of which hung an equally incensed mermaid and a naked, but intimidating, centaur mare who hid her otherwise bare chest with angrily crossed arms. On the other side was a goblinet wearing a dress literally weaved from gold thread made all the more extravagant in comparison to the rancid pillowcase worn by the female house-elf beside her.

Enclosing the entire group of women were two, massive feet she deduced belonged to a giantess who was far too large to fit on the tapestry.

"You would call the man who shared his love of beasts, giving you and your champion a CHANCE at winning this god-forsaken tournament, an oaf!"

It was the Countess berating her. Needless to say her, overly-full bladder was not inspiring the headmistress to respond with a level head.

"Of course I call 'im an oaf. I call I'm an oaf all ze time. He loves eet!"

"A moron he would have to be, to invest even a moment of his finite and precious life to an ungrateful harpy like you!" Said the goblinet.

"A wench who denies what she is." Added the negro girl.

"A woman who cares more about feigning a reputation of being a breed she is not despite the whole world having eyes to see through your self-delusion." Added the mare.

"A disgusting creature who soaks up the love and affection of a wonderful man but gives none in return." Added the Veela.

It was all difficult to make out their incriminating words over the literal screeching of the merwoman and the much more long-winded rants of the Japanese and Indian women, who had taken to their native tongues for the purpose of insulting her. Regardless, Olympe still caught the gist of it.

When a sudden shout of "hear hear!" and similar phrases of agreement erupted from the fourth wall of her quarters she was confronted by the entire roster of former Hogwarts headmasters and headmistresses. Each and every one of them shouting her down for her treatment of her fellow half-giant.

She fell to the floor in a fetal position, tears streaming down her face and hands wrenching fistfuls of hair from her scalp; a habit she had thought broken in her fourth year of school, when she had mistakenly thought that she'd become immune to the teasing of her peers.

"You don't deserve the affections and kindness of such a man!"

"A harlot is more honorable in her act than you!"

"How dare you lead a man on, letting him believe you loved him!"

This last one was by the drunken fat woman, and for some reason her words were the last straw.

"But I DO love him!" She screamed.

Silence.

Each and every figure adorning her walls, and there were many, softened in both posture and facial expression. It was the female elf who finally broke the silence and spoke for the first time.

"You love whom, miss?" She squeaked politely.

"I love 'a-a-agrid!" She cried, stuttering out the first syllable of his name as the first bits of pee began to run down her thigh.

The portraits responded with uproarious applause. So loud were their celebrations that she almost missed the loud creaking from behind her.

Olympe turned to see that the portrait blocking entrance to her private lavatory had opened to grant her access.

"That is indeed the password." Said Sir Cardigan before swinging open himself. "You may pass."

Olympe ignored him as she rushed/hobbled through the open portal provided by the fat lady and, foregoing any sense of propriety or privacy, hiked her silk nightgown all the way to her naval before dropping onto the custome porcelain seat just before the dam broke.

As the heavenly sense of relief faded it took her hysterics with it. Witht last sniffle from her crying fit Olympe Maxime returned to her senses and gaped at the epiphany she had denied in herslef for months now.

"I love 'agrid!" She whispered to herself in horror, but not quietly enough for her uninvited guests to hear.

"That's the spirit!" Sir Cardigan yelled through the still open lavatory door. "Yell it to the heavens!"

Olympe groaned into her hands. This wasn't supposed to happen! She wasn't supposed to fall in love! She couldn't! Not after what happened with that seventh year boy when she first attended Bauxbaton's all those years ago.

"Oh merde! What am I to do?"

One thing was certain. Today was looking to be a hat day.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

**A.N-1:**

This should go without saying, but when I write from a characters perspective I describe characters and locations using vocabulary that I think fits the character. I do not believe Madame Maxime views women of African descent as any less human than she views herself, she just refered to them the way a dignified woman in a middle ages culture would.

I realize some readers may be offended by this, but um, tough shit? I prefer to read the uncensored Huck Finn any day of the week and I am positive Mark Twain wasn't racist. So sue me.

**In Response to Reviews:**

**Drannakka Wrote**:

so misses firebird(fleur), messers trionskin(viktor), paddlecul(cedric), and voulgeneb(harry) pulled a principal's car on the school roof last night(NICE!). How old was that ButterBeer

**Response**:

Good job guessing which character was which nickname! Did all of you manage to figure it out? Can you also guess the meaning of each of the new Marauder's names?

And it's more akin to dragging an entire school up a mountain and leaving it in the middle of the wilderness. The entire Durmstrang ship and it's students are stuck up there. And the butter were age does not change the alcohol content, it only changes the flavor. It was spiked with something.

I'm off to go update** A Much Deadlier Tournament** and **Blood Soaked Succession**. Fans of those stories can expect new chapters next week. I'll see you all then.


	3. Chapter 3: Aftermath

**The Marauding Champions**

* * *

**Chapter 3: **

**Aftermath**

* * *

Harry, freshly showered and devoid of kiss marks, descended from Gryffindor tower in a bit of a tizzy.

The unprotected entrance to the common room had taken a series of blasting curses from both sides to open, and a further bit of advanced transfiguration by their head of house to open to make presentable.

McGonagallhad immediately reared on Fred and George as suspects, but they had an alibi and avoided detention. Harry had one too, but said alibi earned him multiple detentions and a re-hashing of the bird and the bees lecture she gives to all first years after exams finish.

He also had to deal with a few upperclassmen confronting him about rumours of infidelity by their girlfriends. Harry had started the day denyimh every false rumor until he realized half of them were just trying to find out who had given him a makeover by process of elimination. He become more scrupulous in his answers when Angelina asked if it was Hermione, and whether or not he'd received a rainbow blowjob as well.

Now he was in a losing battle with his own reputation as he ignored the many girls trying to claim responsibility for the rumoured bumping-of-uglies in the girl dorms.

It was with hopes that breakfast would help take his mind off of the debacle that Harry trudged down the grand staircase. Around the third floor corridor is where he encountered the fat lady's portrait being hauled up by the ever affable caretaker.

"Morning Mr. Filch. Good morning Mrs. Norris." He greeted casually.

Both growled at him as he stepped aside to allow them to pass. Funnily enough, the fat lady and her visiting friend both shared knowing winks with him.

He'd have to ask the pair what they remembered from last night.

Another floor down he encountered the entire house-elf contingency of Hogwarts School of Witchraft and Wizardry. Each and every one of them carried a gold-embroidered portrait that he recognized as being from the Headmaster's office. Each former headmaster and headmistress he locked eyes with made like the fat lady and winked at him.

Now if only he could figure out a way to sneak into Dumbledore's office and make them sing too.

He spotted Dobby and Winky as part of a quintet carrying a large tapestry.

"Good morning, Master Harry Potter Sir." Dobby greeted with a wave.

In his excitement the energetic elf lost his grip on the tapestry and his four companions dropped it onto the landing. It unfurled to reveal it's contents as that of Sultan Mustafa's harem.

Each and every one of lovely - and not so lovely - ladies on the tapestry showed some sign or another that they recognized him. In the gobliness' case, she made a suggestive licking motion at him.

Sultan Mustafa was certainly a man of, shall we say, refined tastes? And an overblown paranoia of boggarts. Magical historians debated which of the two things - his sexual appetite or need to search every nook and cranny for shapeshifters - that had him replaced as a ruler. Harry suspected the answer was both.

With a mental list of witnesses to last night's misdeads in his head Harry proceeded to the great hall and breakfast within. And as if the universe hadn't delivered enough weirdness to his morning, his breakfast began strange indeed.

For one, the entire Bulgarian populace was missing save for Viktor. For two, Viktor wasn't seated with the Slitherins, but instead at the (understandably empty) Gryffindor table between Fred and George. For a third, said twins were sandwiched between Viktor and Cedric in Fred's case, and Viktor and Fleur in George's case.

Harry suspected he knew what was going on, but joined his fellow champions to help with the harassment all the same.

"Ze eggs are good, oui?" Fleur asked George.

The mellower twin nodded suspiciously as he slowly chewed whatever food, presumably eggs, was in his mouth.

"Da, I vould hope so." Viktor added. "After all, the four of us helped the elves cook this morning, and vorked extra hard on your food in particular."

Now Fred was mirroring his brother's suspicious glare, but both had the sense to not say anything as they quietly ate.

"Here!" Cedric interrupted by spooning a huge dollop of chicken gravy onto both of their plates. "You must try the gravy. We put our _sweat_ and _blood_ into it."

By this point the two let their forks drop with a clatter onto their plates. They actually looked scared. Time for Harry to deliver the coup de grace.

"Here." He offered, pulling a glass bottle out of his robe pocket and slamming it onto the table. "Have some butter beer."

The way their eyes bulged out of the sockets would be seared into his memory for years to come. It was the most comical expression he'd ever seen.

"We, um. We can explain." Fred began, sweating in utter terror at the glare Viktor had permanently affixed to his face; a face mere inches from Fred's own.

"Go on." Viktor enunciated slowly, his nose practically touching Fred's cheek.

"We've been developing a, er, potion. We call it The Fifth Amendment." Fred started.

Huh?

"It's supposed to allow you to avoid incriminating yourself after committing a prank, even under truth potion." George added to an explanation.

Harry still wasn't catching on.

"So, what? It's like the opposite of veritaserum?" Cedric asked.

"More like a memory erasing potion." Fred corrected, trying to lean away from the Bulgarian seeker.

"You can't confess to a crime if you don't remember committing it." Explained George.

Okay, NOW Harry was starting to get it.

"We originally tried using a potion that erases your memories after the fact, but then you have to dispose of the potion container, possibly while in the middle of the deed, which isn't always possible for a prankster." George continued. "So we tried to develop one you could take before doing something and not remember the details."

That was actually brilliant. If you knew what you intended to take the potion beforehand, you could easily stick to any preconceived plan. Hell, you could even wipe your memory of the plan and work off of a checklist, and be sure to burn the checklist before the potion wore off.

"I 'ave nev'air heard of such a potion." Fleur beemed. She seemed to be getting excited at the possibilities too. "What are eet's ingredients?"

The two staryed sweating even harder now, if such a thing were possible.

"Weeell we kinda hit a snag." Said Fred.

"We couldn't find a magical means of producing the effect we wanted." Said George.

"So we turned our attention to muggle means of altering memory." Finished Fred.

Oh.

Oh god.

No!

Harry smacked himself in the face, hard, before sinking into his hands. It was so obvious.

"Please tell me you didn't." Harry begged through his hands, his voice came out as something halfway between a laugh and a cry.

"Vut? Vut is it?" Viktor pleaded, ending his one-sided glaring contest and glancing between Harry and the Weasley's. "Vut did ve drink?!"

Harry looked up from his palms between the five older wizards(and witch) in front of him.

"Please tell me you didn't roofie us!" He pleaded.

The guilt in their expressions told him everything he needed to know

"We might have roofied you." They confessed in unison.

"What? What does that mean? What is roofieing?" Cedric pleaded.

And once again, Harry was reminded how poorly wizards and witches understood the muggle world.

"A roofie is a drug, known as the date rape drug, that sickos slip into girls drinks before having their way with them so they won't remember in the morning."

Fred leapt to his own defense at the renewed death glared from all four champions.

"That's actually a myth!" He exclaimed, still at a hush. "We did our research, even interviewed some cops, and there aren't any reported cases of drink spiking in bars. It's just something people less creative than us imagine it could be used for, so they get paranoid." **(A/N - 1)**

"Yeah." George added. "People can't handle their alcohol and try to blame their poor decisions on spiked drinks. Lord knows I've woken up beside a mistake thanks to alcohol before."

Harry couldn't relate. He'd only ever woken up from a night of forgotten drunknery beside one woman before, and it was the best thing to ever happen to him. So far.

"Wouldn't such a zing be illegal?" Fleur asked. "Just on the potential to do harm, substantiated or not?"

"Yup." The duo nodded.

"It was a bitch finding any, mind you." Said Fred.

"The nice meth dealer behind the hardware store took serious offense to our request when we asked for some." Said George.

"Us wizards really don't give Muggle's enough credit. Guns are scary." Said Fred.

"And loud." Added George with a nod.

With that mystery solved Viktor _politely_ asked the twins to leave so the Marauders could decide what to do with them. They didn't need second telling before scampering off.

They discussed whether or not to report them to the staff, but that ran the risk of the twins winding up behind honestly didn't want that. Besides, there was a series of pranks and thefts committed the night before and this added evidence might implicate them, memory of the incident or no.

They would need to invent a personalized punishment for them. It was the Marauder way. A prank for a prank.

But with the great hall filling up fast they would have to put off planning their revenge for later. For now, they started on their own breakfast.

Harry had gotten as far as taking a sip of pumpkin juice before winding up in a coughing fit.

"What?" Fleur asked cutely when he stared at her mitten-covered hands.

They weren't normal, every day mittens. They were big, red, honest to God oven mitts. They clashed horribly with the light blue of her beauxbatons uniform. They also looked ridiculous.

"What?!" Fleur reiterated, blushing. "It eez cold in zis God-forsaken island."

Right. Cover story. Black claws for hands. He forgot.

By the time he'd finished eating, the Gryffindor table had filled to capacity by the late arrivals. It was here that the final oddity of the day came stampeding into his life when a centaur entered the great hall.

Harry had to double, triple and quadruple check to confirm it was indeed a centaur, but it had a human torso and a horse for a butt, then there was only one thing that could be. Quack like a duck and all that. The centaur wasn't alone as he, and several of his brethren, seemed to be escorting the entire Durmstrang populace into the great hall.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Viktor flagged down one of his classmates, the one who liked to paint his robes with spaghetti, and held a hushed conversation in Bulgarian. A conversation he relayed with what looked like a blush.

"It appears somebody stole the Durmstrang ship and, somehow, carried it up and down two mountains to leave it stranded on top of a cliff deep in the forbidden forest."

Hmm. Wonder who could have done that.

"And ze centaurs?" Fleur asked.

"They escorted us back through the horrid forest." Viktor's classmate, Poliakoff of Harry remembered correctly, explained with a shudder.

"That's awfully... charitable of them." Cedric observed, his voice dripping with suspicion.

Harry seconded that opinion.

A reclusive tribe of man-hating beast men helping foreign witches and wizards navigate through their territory?

"Well there's a gift horse in need of a dental exam if ever there was one." Harry decided as he stood up to march towards the demihumans Hogwarts shared a ward system with.

"Vut?" Viktor and Poliakoff asked after him in confusion at the expression.

"Nothing!" Harry called back with a wave. "Be right back!"

Harry approached the centaur nearest the door and realized he was familiar. Ronan? No, this one was Bane. Harry remembered Bane. Harry remembered Bane perfectly.

"Oh my goodness! Bane! Is that you?!" Harry greeted in his best impression of a middle aged attention-seeking woman he could.

For his part, the surly centaur flinched at the unexpected greeting before considering the greeter. Recognition dawned on him like a rising sun.

"I haven't seen you since that time you were debating the merits of leaving an eleven year old boy to die in the forbidden forest with these two. How. Have. You. Been." He punctuated each word with a Hagridian(tm) slap to Bane's shoulder. His bottom one.

The pair this debate had taken place with stood in the entrance hall and were pointedly ignoring the conversation. Firenze at least looked amused, for what little of his rescuer's face Harry could see from this angle.

"Ah yes. Mister Potter. How very nice to see you well." Bane greeted patiently.

The usual buzz of rumor spreading had already erupted from the students within earshot of his flippant greeting earlier. Which is to say, Harry could barely hear Bane's response over the cocophony of whispering coming from every corner of the great hall.

"Mighty nice of you all to help escort these foreign students back to the castle. I didn't know you had it in you to be charitable." Harry continued speaking in an unecessarily high pitch.

"I suppose we all have it in us to show goodwill to one another, Mister Potter. We showed quite a bit towards rescuing you when you wandered into our territory years ago."

We? Maybe this poor centaur was getting up there in age. He clearly wasn't remembering that series of events properly. Could you tell a centaurs age by the state of their teeth like you could horses? Were centaurs herbivores like horses or omnivores like men? They did seem to have human teeth and did carry around weapons normally used for hunting. Hmmm.

"Well it's always good to see a person change for the better. So tell me, Bane, what brought about this sudden burst of philanthropy from you?"

Bane made a sound that resembled an animalistic growl being held back in his throat. Good to know Harry was accomplishing his mission.

"When a lost herd is wandering aimlessly in your territory, it is best to help them on their way." Bane explained.

Harry mentally translated that to_ "A bunch of naked monkeys carrying wands were trapped in our house and it was easier to guide them away than have a pitched battle in which all of us would probably die_."

Seemed reasonable.

"I'll leave you all to it then."

* * *

Harry found himself regretting his decision to antagonize the warhawk of the local centaur clan when, later that day, detention had him and a handful of other student's following Hagrid into the forbidden forest.

Hagrid, as per any detention, confiscated their wands at the start. What was unusual was when he handed them axes and a blister cureing balm and pointed out which trees they were to chop down. They did as told without any further instruction for some twenty minutes before Hagrid returned with the Bauxbaton's herd of Abraxan.

"No no no! You don' be holdin the axe like that!" Hagrid had boomed when he saw their atrocious forms.

And so began their improptu lesson in proper wood cutting. Particular focus was placed on only using your arms and letting the weight of the axe do most of the work for you. Most of them had made the mistake of trying to work through the whole tree using the axe, whereas they were only supposed to use it to remove the bark and use the giant saws(which Hagrid had yet to bring out, so they couldn't have possibly deduced) to take the tree out.

They worked in pairs removing tree bark all day, making a path along a shallow stream that couldn't be more than a meter wide. Harry naturally chose to pair with Viktor, who obviously hadn't slept in the Durmstrang ship and received the same number of detentions as Harry.

Several of the less skittish inhabitants of the forest came to watch them suffer, chief among them Bane and an entourage of centaurs Harry had never seen before, but assumed were of similar temperament to the warhawk. There was also an annoying blue tit that tweeted like a song bird in what sounded like mocking remarks in it's best approximation of the Scottish language. It was clearly some kind of magical bird, but what type, none of them could tell.

It wasn't until the sun was getting low that Hagrid brought out the saws and, again in pairs, they got to work.

Harry praised his luck that he had the beastly Bulgarian as his partner. The two of them could power through a tree in ten minutes flat. Well, that wasn't completely true. Viktor cold power through an entire tree in ten minutes flat. Harry just helped.

After they finished felling all of the trees they split up to take out the branches with their axes.

The day of detention ended with Hagrid teaching them how to properly tie the fallen trees to the Abraxan in such a way that it wouldn't choke them or put stress on their wings. The hardest part was coaxing the majestic creatures to tow the logs and guide them to the back of Hagrid's hut.

To call them uncooperative, would be an understatement.

That evening found them loitering in the library with Fleur and Hermione as they studied. When they remembered to use the blister balm, which Harry desperately needed, the girls looked absolutely aghast at the result.

"It healed zem?" Fleur asked in surprise she examined Harry's perfectly smooth palms.

"Yes? Wasn't that the point?"

Fleur ignored his question as Hermione snatched up the potion bottle and examined the description. Potions made for selling were required to list their ingredients. Allergic reactions to magical ingredients were heaps and bounds worse than allergic reactions to more mundane things.

Fleur looked over Hermione's shoulder to read along and nodded when his bushy-haired friend tapped the glass container to indicate an ingredient.

"We will be borrowing zese for ze evening." Fleur informed them before pecking Harry on the cheek. "Goodnight."

Hermione repeated Fleurs actions, for Viktor, before the pair vanished from the library.

Harry turned an inquisitive eye to his fellow seeker, but Viktor could only shrug.

The next evening after classes saw a disproportionate amount of Gryffindor students in detention, along with the return of Harry and Viktor's blister balm from their ladies. It now smelled of lavender and eucalyptus instead of a nondescript cream.

Harry figured they wouldn't have done anything dangerous to it. After all, no woman would ever try to poison the man they loved, Right?

Right?

Detention went the same as the day before. Remove the tree bark, ignore the centaur watchers, saw the tree down, apply blister balm, remove the branches, ignore the tiny bird attempting to speak a human language, have the Abeaxan drag the tree trunks to the hutt and apply more blister balm.

It became apparent that the plan was to clear a trail along the stream all the way to the Durmstrang ship. But it only became apparent to the Marauders because they took up the two invisibility cloaks and followed the stream for ten whole kilometers in pairs. Up and down two whole mountains, to the cliff where the ship was moared.

It was trapped beside a large pond, which was likely an aquafir, and for the life of them they couldn't figure out what they'd done to get it here.

"Maybe we shrank it and pushed it up the stream?" Cedric offered.

Harry shot the idea down.

"No. Even if we could have shrunken it without causing all of the spacial expansion charms inside to collapse, likely impossible, it wouldn't have reduced it's weight or mass and there is no way we could have dragged it. Maybe with the entire Abeaxan herd, but it would have taken forever."

"It has a method of flight, but it can only be activated ven Karkroff and five teachers activate the function." Viktor offered.

"Mmm. Maybe. We are razzer brilliant together, we could 'ave overridden ze controls." Fleur offered.

It was doubtful, but also the best possibility they could come with before it was time to sneak back to school.

The next day saw a proportionate amount of Slytherins joining the Gryffindor students for detention. Clearly the other teachers caught on to Snape's intentional targeting of the house of lions and decided to return the favor.

This was made all the more humorous when you considered most of them were prissy little purebloods(Draco) who had never done hard labor in their life, or likely even any household chores. They sure were amusing to watch as they struggled, and the talking tit jeered them mercilessly, or at least Harry thought it was jeering. He couldn't really tell.

The surprising exception to this trend were Crabbe and Goyle. The two had managed to take down a tree with combined axe strikes before Hagrid could instruct them on proper procedure. The care for magical beasts instructor seemed torn on whether to be disappointed in the other students for not correcting the bozos, or being impressed that the two forteen year olds could manage it.

Harry, along with all of the other student's, settled for being impressed.

The rest of the week passed in a blur. A few more odd creatures stopped by their work areas to see what they were doing, including what looked a lot like a scaly unicorn whose single horn was more like that of a deers instead of a narwhal.

A few of them went to go check it out when it vanished, but only found burnt footprints in the brush where it had been.

"I think that was a Kirin." Draco said suddenly as they walked back to the others.

"A what?" Harry, Vincent, Gregory and Ron asked dumbly.

Draco sneered. At all of them.

"It's like a unicorn, but found in the far east. Japan, Korea and China." He explained.

"Oh." Said Vincent dumbly. "Then what's it doing here?"

Ron made a suggestion.

"Well I imagine somebody imported a baby, or egg, illegally.(Hagrid?) Then tried to raise it despite not knowing how or without realizing it couldn't be domesticated.(Hagrid.) Then, instead of responsibly turning it over to the authorities to be returned to it's natural habitat, released it into the forbidden forest."

Harry also discovered what alterations his girlfriend(?) had made to the blister balm when, instead of healing it to baby smooth skin, his palms imstead developed tough callouses where blisters had once been.

The same night he made this discovery he made another one. When he grasped Fleur's bare ankle underneath the library table and she utterly swooned, after making an adorable squeek that is. Turns out girls like being grasped by rough, calloused hands. A lot.

Who knew?!

When Harry confronted the two girls about why they altered the potions to do this their answer floored him.

"If we are going to have lumberjacks for boyfriends, we might as well try to meek out all of the benefits that come with it." Hermione had said, before turning on Viktor. "Would you be open to growing out your beard?"

Harry was thankful Fleur didn't make a similar request of him. He would have hated to disappoint her.

By the end of the week Harry no longer gained new blisters from detentions. They weren't even halfway through carving a path through the forest to reach the ship, but Harry and Viktor's detentions were over so they didn't care. Well, Viktor cared a little, but only because he and his fellow Durmstrang students were stuck sleeping in the Slytherin dormitory until the work was done.

It was because of this sleeping arrangements that the Marauder's chose to meet up in the dungeons when they next had the chance.

Harry had snuck out to the Bauxbaton's carriage under his family cloak to retrieve Fleur while Cedric snuck to the Slytherin common room entrance under Moody's to retrieve Viktor. The four met in front of a tapestry depicting a beautiful oriental woman with her hair in a bun sitting beside a hot spring in nothing but a white fluffy towel.

She considered them as they removed their cloaks and revealed their faces.(Viktor's with a fresh 5 o'clock shadow) and Harry stepped forth to open her passage.

He made a show of stretching in such a way as to indicate he was sore from a hard day's work. It wasn't hard to do, considering he very much was. The raven-haired woman giggled before opening the passage so they could enter the secret greenhouses.

They were immediately bombarded by thick steam and the scent of mint.

As they entered and adjusted they could see a massive silver cluster-leaf tree on a tiny island surrounded by a pool of scalding water. It's wide branches blotted out the white moonlight from the glass roof above and hid the tiny courtyard Harry knew was beyond it. Snowberry branches hung over the rocky enclosure for the pool and stone seats sat all around it in a bed of vibrant green mint and silver licorice.

"Welcome everyone." Harry annoinced dramatically. "To the Slytherin Snowberry Sauna!"

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

**A.N-1:**

I would link to studies or articles done on the topic of drink spiking, but I'm not allowed to. So I'll name a couple. If you care about this subject feel free to research further.

\- _**Embodying Uncertainty?: Understanding Heightened Risk Perception of Drink 'Spiking' by Adam Burgess, Pamela Donovan, Sarah E. H. Moore**_

_**\- Prospective study of 101 patients with suspected drink spiking by Quigley P, et al. Emerg Med Australas. 2009**_

Drink spiking is mostly a myth, but using Rohypnol to rape people is very real. Usually in Hollywood circles, on children, but I would hope my readers are well-informed enough to know all about this, and not need me to explain that vial den of pedophilia.

Also, Epstein was assassinated. Water is wet. Grass is known to be green in pigment. Thank you for allowing me to give you this public service announcement.

**In Response to Reviews:**

**Guest Wrote:**

You do know "neb" doesn't mean nose? Nose is "nez".

**Response**:

The Scottish word for nose is nez. Hogwarts is located in Scotland, not England, hence the Scottish inspiration for Harry's nickname.

**Scott the Wandere Wrote:**

Okay, that potion needs some serious work. You literally have one of the deadliest poisons to 99% of the world. You need a good reason people haven't been slipping it to others to kill them.

**Response**:

I mean, there are plenty of more effective ways to poison a person that doesn't run the risk of being caught when your victim suddenly morphs into a terror bird and swallows you whole.

But I think I'll go back and throw in a disclaimer about Sirius running the risk of being caught making a potion whose ingredients are highly regulated and tracked by the authorities, just like we track bomb-making materials in real life.

Good opportunity for world building. Thanks for the criticism.


	4. Chapter 4: Inheritance

**The Marauding Champions**

* * *

**Chapter 4:**

**Inheritance**

* * *

Relaxing in the sauna was exactly what the Marauders needed after the week they had. Especially Harry and Viktor.

Fleur was kind enough to transfigure all of their clothes into swimwear, save for hers. The part-Veela settled for hiking her skirt up to her thighs and soaking her feet in the shallow water. They were a fine pair of legs, and made for a great backrest as Harry sank into the steaming water and leaned against his girlfriend(!). As they did so they vehemently ignored Cedric and Viktor's debate on why it was called a sauna instead of a hot spring, as it obviously was.

Harry assumed it was because the Hogwarts founders had apparently formed an organization known as the Alliterative Assholes, and couldn't call things by their proper names if a similar word would suffice to make it rhyme or alliterate.

"So." Harry began the meeting. "Paddlecul, Firebird. How went your work on the map?"

Fleur and Cedric had spent their free time over the week skulking around the castle, using the original Marauder's map to explore as much of it as they could, while carrying the new prototypes. The autofill function should have managed the rest.

"Well, we've filled out most of the castle while you and Trionskin were off in wood shop, but we also ran into a problem." Cedric said.

"Several problems." Fleur amended.

Fleur and Cedric, who had both borrowed Viktor and Harry's maps during their excursions, set the four new maps on the floor beside the original. Harry had to turn around to peruse them, but that provided a perfect opportunity to face his woman and lay against her lap.

So soft.

The gesture must have looked rightly indecent to their fellow Marauders, but he didn't care.

"Vhat is this?" Viktor snapped when he picked up his map. "I cannot make sense of a thing."

Harry spotted exactly what the problem was with his map. It looked like... It looked like the autofill function attempted to draw over the same place over and over again until all that remained was an illegible collage of lines and curves. It wasn't just worthless, it was ruined.

"That actually makes sense. The original wasn't a single piece of paper, it has separate folds." Harry explained, picking up the map of his father's generation and holding it up as proof. "I'm guessing the strange spacial structure and overlaying positions of rooms in the school and secret passages make a normal map layout impossible."

The other's looks at him. Then looked at him some more.

"I'm smarter than I look, honestly." He exclaimed amidst their chortling at his sudden rise in IQ.

They all agreed that they'd need to start over from scratch to remake the maps, and set about disposing of the only ones. The only parts they kept were cutouts of the boxes that allowed communication and the title with their names.

Cedric conjured four cork boards the size of hand mirrors for them to stick their respective pieces too with hairpins, as provided by Fleur. She sure had a lot of them stuck in that bun on her head. They were the perfect tool for sharing messages and instructions to one another, so best not get rid of them. Especially since they had no idea how they even made them to begin with.

"So." Viktor pressed on. "Vhat do ve do about the veasley twins?"

"I think zat much be obvious, no?" Said Fleur. " We.."

"So. The eighty sixth-generation of Marauders has come at last."

They all leapt to the their feet at the interrupting voice, their wands leaping to their hands with them.

"They sure kept us waiting. A gap of nearly eighteen years in the line of succession is unheard of. We feared the worst."

The second voice was deep and sensual, that of a woman.

"We had feared, and dare I say, hoped we would never have to initiate a new generation. Alas, here you are."

That voice Harry knew, and knew well.

"Wait... Sir Nicholas?"

The Gyrffindor House ghost floated through the wall from above the tapestry entrance. From the other three corners emerged the Grey Lady, The Fat Frier and the Bloody Baron. All four house ghosts had come to meet the new Marauders.

And then they bowed. It would have been humbling if it weren't for the temperature in the humid sauna dropping to freezing with their appearance.

"Greetings Successors." The Baron said. "We have long awaited your arrival."

The two quartets stared at each other in silence for some time. Harry soon realized he was the only person with enough knowledge to put all of these pieces together. He figured he'd start with the obvious.

"So, my dad and his friends weren't the first Marauders?"

"No." The Grey Lady confirmed.

"But you four were?" Cedric, who was catching on surprisingly fast, prodded.

"No." The Bloody Baron denied. "We were the second."

That was a difficult morsel to mentally digest.

As far as Harry knew the house ghosts were chosen as stewards of their individual houses because they were the first of each to become bound to Hogwarts after their deaths. Their individual history was highly debated, and the Grey Lady's was a mystery. But for another generation to have been Marauders before them seemed impossible based on his skimming of Hogwarts, a History.

"Wait." Fleur seemed to have had an epiphany. "I think I can guess who ze first generation was, can ze four of you confirm some of my assumptions first?

The house ghosts each nodded.

"Every generation of Marauders are at least close friends?"

"At the very least." The Grey Lady confirmed, giving the Bloody Baron a suggestive wink.

Gross.

"And all Marauders are animagi?"

"No." Nicholas told them. "Three of each group are animagi, the fourth is always something more magical."

Like a werewolf or Veela, perchance?

"We actually have an entire speech about the history and fate of Marauders, but please go on. We can give it after we see if you can figure this one out " The Friar encouraged with his usual drunken blush.

Fleur went on.

"Hmmm. What group of four people do we know of zat were very good friends, and whom also seem to have identities wholly inseparable from zat of a specific animal?" Fleur speculated aloud, sarcastically

And then it clicked.

"The founders!" Harry and Cedric gasped in unison.

Viktor made a grunt that seemed to signify a slight epiphany, like coming to understand the theory behind a spell. After a week working as a lumberjack with the Bulgarian it was becoming easier to decipher his grunts.

"Their names should have made that obvious." Sir Nicholas chastised them. "Honestly, did you believe Slytherin was uncle Salazar's ACTUAL sirname?"

Of course! Harry had always thought the house names sounded ridiculous. They were Marauder aliases! It would be like Remus Lupin being remembered a Remus Mooney in the history books a millenia from now.

"Ravenclaw?" Harry pondered. "She was an eagle then? But why the distinction of her claw?"

"It was distinctly black, unlike the average sea eagle, along with her beak. Her plumage was pale, almost white." The Grey Lady explained.

"Gryffindor was a lion?" Cedric pressed. "So why the comparison to a Gryphon? What is a dor on a gryphon?"

"Dor was slang for butt in their time." Sir Nicholas explained. "His nickname meant Gryphons arse."

That's definitely chuckle worthy. Probably something the other founders came up with to always remind him how stubborn he is.

"I'm guessing Slytherin wasn't actually a snake, but was ze 'something more magical' you mentioned? Simply a parseltongue? Making Hufflepuff ze third animagi as a badger!" Fleur concluded.

"Correct." The Bloody Baron confirmed. "But uncle Salazar was much more than a parseltongue. He was part Naga, hence his ability to speak to snakes. The only trace of his half breed status to pass onto his descendants. One of every group of Marauaders must be a half breed, like mademoiselle Delacour here, or suffering from a blood curse, like Mister Lupin.

"Hold your horses dear, we'll get to explaining that soon." The Grey Lady chastised the Baron.

The detail about parseltongue gave Harry pause.

"Wait, I thought you said three are animagi and only one is something else. If I'm a parseltongue and Firebird is of mixed heritage, then aren't we breaking the rules here?" He asked.

The answer was curt, but explanatory.

"You are not a parseltongue by birth. You've obtained the ability without the blood curse, as such it is not in your veins nor will it be passed down by your loins." Sir Nicholas assuaged his concerns. "And even if it was by birth, you would be so very many generations removed from Salazar's Naga heritage that you would not qualify as a half breed. You must be no less than an eighth nonhuman. After four generations you no longer qualify."

Disregarding his use of the word "loins" this revelation came as a spot of relief. At least his kids won't ever have to deal with this "heir of Slytherin" tripe.

"May we give our well-practice speech now?" The Friar asked. "We've done it eighty three times now, it's kind of traditional at this point."

Harry, Fleur, Cedric and Viktor responded with a cacophony of sounds, hand motions and nods all amounting to "Please, go on."

The house ghosts cleared their throats dramatically and adjusted their clothes before speaking in turns.

"When Hogwarts was founded the four founders looked to the universities of Muggle make and saw them to be distasteful." Said Sir Nicholas.

"They saw the stifling of curiosity, creativity and good humor alongside the destruction of brilliant minds and abuse of authority." Said the Frair.

"They decided such would not be true in their school, and so took measures to put in place a counterbalance to the authority and power of faculty, and a means to ensure the rise of great potential in future generations." Said the Grey Lady.

"And so they cast a curse upon the school. A true curse like the ancients used, one not cast with a spell nor of simple effects, but one to cause a repeat of ordered events forevermore." Said The Bloody Baron.

"This curse served multifold purposes. The first is to bring together four disparate youths who each represent the ideals, and potential for greatness, of the founders themselves." Continued Nicholas.

"The second is to instill in them the mischief and camaraderie needed to pool their different talents and personalities together into an unstoppable force, equal in might and authority to that of the entire faculty combined." Continued The Friar.

"The third was to pass on the traits and powers of the founders to each new generation, and to bequeath them with an everlasting friendship that surpasses time, distance and even betrayal or war." Continued The Grey Lady.

"The fourth was to, unfortunately, curse each generation to share the founders fate." Continued The Baron.

"In every generation one is cursed to be punished for a crime they did not commit." Said Sir Nicholas, dislodging his head like a hat to emphasize the point.

"Another is cursed to suffer a life estranged from the others." Said the Friar.

"A third is cursed to die by the actions of another member." Said the Grey Lady, casting her eyes downward in sadness.

"The fourth is destined to die by their own hand." Said the Bloody Baron, opening his robes to show the knife embedded into his heart, presumably by his own hand.

"But with the curse comes the blessing. And the curse will bring together four disperate youths under the guise of the Marauders, instilling in each of them a proper sense of mischief." Finished Sir Nicholas.

"The curse shall also bestow upon them shackles of friendship that shall never truly fade, even in death. Three to become animagi and the fourth a half breed." Finished the Friar.

"It shall also destine the four youths to craft and invent objects of immense power, one as a collaborative effort and one unique to each of them." Finished the Grey Lady

"And finally it shall bless them with a pair of rivals, the Innovator and the Spellcrafter. Foils with which they shall compete and better themselves." Finished the Bloody Baron. "One member of both parties are also destined to wed each other, but that's a mixed bag."

The ghosts went silent with the end of their tale. Silence in which the new generation could contemplate the history and fate they had inherited.

Harry, for his part, didn't understand the nature of a true curse at all. It wasn't something he'd learned about, but promised to remedy that fact in the future. The rest was pretty straightforward, save for one part that didn't add up.

"Hang on, my dad and his friends were all in Gryffindor. How could they have properly represented a founder each?" Harry asked.

"Ah, though they were all in the same house they were each excellent examples of one house' virtue or another. Your father being the quintessential Gryfindor." Nicholas told him. "To a fault."

"Remus was an eagle in the lions den." Said the Grey Lady. "Studious and brilliant. It saddens me to know he was never allowed to reach his potential after schooling, but such is the curse at times."

"I'm sure you don't need me to tell you of the guile, cunning and naked ambition of Mister Pettigrew?" The Bloody Baron said, souring Harry's mood.

"And I have NEVER seen a person more loyal than Sirius Black. It is by no coincidence that his animagus form is that of man's best, and most loyal, friend." The Friar said, uplifting Harry's mood. "Though he left much to be desired in his work ethic.

Harry snorted at that one. The first thing he'd done while recovering from the time turner adventure was ask to see the school records from his parent's generation. They were practically flunking out of school anytime other than end of year exams. Based on those and their owl/newt scores they should have all been top of their class, save for laziness.

"And vhat of this, curse?" Viktor broached. "Is there really no preventing us from falling to such miserable fates?"

His answer was four solemn head shakes and accompanying frowns.

"All have tried. None have yet succeeded." Said the Baron.

"And is there any way to predict which one of us will suffer which fate?" Asked Cedric. "Is it usually the Gryffindor or Ravenclaw killed by a friend for instance?"

Another quartet of frowns and shaking of heads were his answer.

"The best you can do, and I implore you to try, is to not dwell or contemplate which is which." Offered the Friar. "Doing so will only year you apart with suspicion and the need to walk on eggshells for fear of suspicion, or fear for each other's wellbeing. It destroyed your father's generation, don't fall to the same fate."

That sounded like an impossible request. How could they not obsess over it.

"I am more curious about zese objects of power you mentioned. Can you tell us more about zat?" Fleur pleaded.

"Well, the founders worked together to create Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." Explained the grey lady. "A monumentally powerful and unique object, if you can view it as such. And each of the founders invented their own legendary artifacts. Surely you've heard of them?"

The Bloody Baron snorted. "Potter here has even weilded one to kill Ariadne."

"Who?" Harry asked.

"The basilisk. She used to have such a kind disposition too." The Bloody Baron bemoaned.

"Er, right. Gryffindors sword." Harry confirmed, refraining from commenting on the blood thirsty serpent.

"Hufflepuff created a goblet of sorts, though nobody knows for certain what it does." Cedric told them. "And I know of Ravenclaw's lost diadem which is supposed to grant the wearer increased intelligence."

"It's effects are a bit more complicated than that, but essentially yes." Confirmed the Grey Lady. "And Salazar crafted a locket holding the secrets to parselmagic, most all of which was actually invented by his wife and rival, who was also part Naga though of a different clan."

Sounds powerful.

"I know my father's generation created the map together, but what of their individual creations?" Harry asked.

"That, is something I would suggest you try to find out on your own." The Friar told them with a benign smile.

"Okay... And these rivals? You said there's always two?" Harry egged on.

"Indeed. For the previous generation the rivals were none other than your own mother, Mister Potter." Explained the Friar. " Along with her best friend. She was an innovator, discovering shortcuts and improvement to all manner of potions. Her friend was the spellcrafter, who designed many amazing curses and jinxes. Oh, their clashes with the Marauders were things of legend. Such a shame their particular rivalry turned particularly vicious in their final years at school."

They returned once more to solemn silence after that, which the ghosts took as their sign to leave. Which was all well and good, because they had already given Harry plenty to think about.

"If there isn't anything else, we have duties to return to." The Bloody Baron told them as a way of excusing himself.

"Actually." Viktor said, stopping them in their flight. "I do have one question."

The Baron motioned for Viktor to continue.

"Vhat in the hell is a Hovelpov and vhat does it have to do vith Badgers?"

Their predecessors answered with uproarious laughter, either at his question, his pronunciation or both.

"It was a word aunt Helga made up for Badgers." Said the Grey Lady. "She made up weird words for everything, like snidget, or Quidditch or Hogwarts, though that last one was a play on her criticism of the meadery nearby, whose product she claimed wasn't even worthy of being a hog's breakfast. Hence Hogsmead. Some of these names stuck, even for things that were called something else before."

Helga was now Harry's favorite founder.

"There's a young lady in Ravenclaw house who has a similar quirk." Informed Sir Nicholas. "I have been debating with Helena if she could possibly be ain't Helga's reincarnation."

Harry would find this girl. Harry would befriend this girl. Harry would bring this girl on as an honorary member and possible successor for his generation of Marauders.

"Hah! You would entertain the possibility, you bloody Cathar." Snorted the Fat Friar. "How many times do I have to tell you there is NO THEOLOGICAL BASIS FOR REINCARNATION!"**(AN-1)**

"NOR IS THERE ANY FOR PRAYING TO MARY! MAYBE IF YOU CATHOLICS BOTHERED TO READ THE BIBLE YOU'D KNOW ABOUT THIS GUY NAMED JESUS!" Screamed back Sir Nicholas before whispering "He's kind of a big deal."

"LADIES, LADIES!" Interrupted the Grey Lady. "You're both pretty."

The ancient Marauders, having finally started acting like Marauders, bidded them adieux and left back through the walls.

The newest generation of Marauders returned to silence.

"So anyways, about the Weasley Twins."

And so they plotted, argued, and plotted some more.

Fleur suggested they try to somehow frame the twins for the series of pranks they themselves performed while under the influence. It was, after all, their fault for spiking the butter beer. Viktor shot that one down.

"Ve should take pride in our vorks and not tolerate others trying to take credit. Vhile avoiding being caught is more important, we vill not ever push the blame or punishment onto others."

He was very emphatic in his statement, and so was born the first Marauder Rule

Marauder Rule #1: Take pride in your work and never frame others for it not allow them to take credit.

Fleur pouted at the rejection of her idea, but even Harry couldn't bring himself to lie to his girlfriend and claim to like it. From there they threw out several ideas, ranging from cheating on the owl tests on the twins behalf, thus getting them into trouble, or fudging their scores into straight O's.

The reasoning behind that one was that it would get the twins a lot of positive academic attention, something they would despise. They shelves that idea for later.

"You, know I think we're trying to be too flashy." Said Harry. "Lets try some something minor, more simple. An avalanche of mini pranks against them, the kind of things they do. Give them a taste of their own medicine, as it were."

The other's like that idea. They liked it a lot.

"I have close to no experience doing such things though." Worried Cedric.

"Zen it should be a good learning exercise, oui?" Countered Fleur.

"I am not so sure. You are suggesting ve fight these Veasleys in an arena they are masters of. Small, petty pranks."

Viktor had a point there. If they were going to use the twins as a training exercise, then it behooved of them to bring in someone more experienced into give them advice. A master of the petty pranks to help them learn faster.

"Guys, can you keep a secret?" Harry suddenly asked.

"Niet."

"I tend to just run at the mouth, it's a big problem."

"I am a 'orrible gossip, 'arry. I 'ave already told ze whole school of our sordid bedroom escapades."

Well, at least now he knew not to let Fleur or Viktor get away with the whole_'Oh, I don't understand sarcasm, I'm a foreigner'_ schtick ever again.

Harry told them everything.

* * *

The following Monday was one to remember.

For Harry it started with a trip down to the kitchens to hunt down his favorite, and least favorite, house elf. Dobby was excited to help him and would probably do anything he asked without question, so the well-practiced lie was kind of redundant.

"Some friends and I prefer our beds made a certain way, I was wondering if I could request for the elves to make mine, Fred and George's bed differently?"

Dobby absolutely beamed at him.

"Of course Harry Potter sir, how would yous be liking it? I be doing it myself!"

Harry then proceeded to teach Dobby how to short sheet a bed. Sure, that would mean the elf would short sheet his bed as well, but Harry tended to sleep on top of the covers with a separate fleece blanket to keep him warm. Especially this time of year.

The only class he had that day was defense, which had been canceled the week before for some mysterious reason. Instead of an eyepatch wearing Moody, however, the class was being substituted by none other than Dumbledore himself

And it suuuuuucked.

"The best defense against danger of all kinds is to recognize and avoid them to begin with." Was the exact sentence he used to begin his lecture.

And that really should have been it, but he droned on and on and on. He gave an entire thirty minute speech about how it's every individual's responsibility to keep themselves safe, for they are the only ones who can. Most of the remaining class devolved into a mostly philosophical question on the importance and benefits of learning self-defense,y the Muggle philosophy behind the right to bare arms, and discussing hypothetical situations involving bar fights, muggings, or recognizing aggressive body language of people best left avoided.

It was a speech nicely summarized by the phrase "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" But sure Dumbledore, go ahead and waste two hours of everyone's life stretching a two word lesson into a fucking novel.

Oh and he gave them all homework that had them considering what kind of actions a spouse or other loved ones could do to you in particular that could inspire you to violence, and possibly murder. He also assigned them to look up crime statistics on assault and murder. Big shock, a lot of murders and violence in relationships are in reaction to infidelity or some kind of psychological abuse.

So yeah, don't cheat on or nag your spouse death. They might fucking kill you. Big revelation there professor.

Harry might as well have titled his essay "Do the opposite of what the Dursley's did to me." And devoted the entire thing to recounting his personal experiences living in that house and relating them to potential future relationships. That ought to hurt the old man where it counts, not that Harry was vindictive or anything.

When they finished their homework Harry followed Dean and Seamus to their detention. He no longer had any of his own, but he wanted to keep tabs on the progress of his fellow students and he was curious if Seamus could understand or translate the Magnificent Yapping Blue Tit.

"It's informing Draco that he should stop styling his hair with whatever mixture of acromantula spit and trill spooge he uses and politely instructing him to crawl back up his whore mother's birth canal by way of her rectal wall until he bursts out of her stomach like a... What the hell is a Xenomorph?"

So the tit was not only more foul-mouthed than Harry ever imagined, but was also familiar with Muggle filmography? Neato!

Leaving Seamus with instructions to write down all future Tit insults - for his own later use, of course - Harry went down to Hagrid's hut to see that he had created an actual woodshop for working on the spare bits of wood. Hagrid had been busy, creating a saw mill for splitting logs into thin beams and the severed branches to even thinner beams.

The purpose was obvious. Detentiones were being forced to build fencing along the path of deforestation leading up to the Durmstrang ship. He would have been left wondering how such a pitiful construction was supposed to deter any of the wild beasts from reaching the path if it wasn't for the rune students carving animal-repellant arrays for practice.

The wizarding world really needed to get up to date on child labor laws. Or maybe the Muggle world needs to stop pretending people below the age of sixteen shouldn't be paid for the work that they totally aren't doing? Bit of both?

At least those students were being paid in extra credit.

His next stop was to the library to study up on true curses. The first book to discuss the topic was written from the perspective of a Muggleborn.

"You ever seen Stephan King's thinner? That's a regular curse, easily cured by a counterspell. A true curse is more akin to the curse of the pharaohs, anchored to a place and designed to befall anybody who meets a certain set of conditions. It can be as simple as instant death for anybody who crosses a threshold, to jinxing a school position so that anybody who fills it will either be sacked, retired or killed within a year of taking it up. But they can be even more complicated than that, requiring dozens of conditions to activate and having dozens of effects on the afflicted party."

According to this, the Marauder Curse sounded like it may be the most complicated one ever devised, or at the least implemented.

There were a few rules to curse making. Namely that they must be balanced between positive and negative effects and activators. For an instant death curse on a tomb it's balanced out by the karma of the individual. Your negative intent of robbing the tomb fuels the negative effect of the curse. If you want a curse to have multiple negative effects then you need to add a positive effect or two.

For three negative effects it needs to be fueled either by three negative conditions - difficult - or one negative conditions and two positive effects added to the curse. It wasn't unheard of for a curse to be designed to grant predominantly positive effects, but the same rules applied. They had to have negative effects added to balance it out.

Hence the suicide, murder, estrangement and scapegoat clauses for the Marauder curse.

Unfortunately, true curses were nearly impossible to break after taking effect except by the person who crafted it. It truly was impossible to dispel the negative effects if you've already experienced the positive ones, which the four champion already had.

Fortunately, they had years to try and figure it out and the knowledge and experience of nearly two whole generations of former Marauder's to draw on(Just as soon as they capture Pettigrew.) Maybe more if there are any living members of previous generations to his dad's posse, which was a distinct possibility.

He wasn't quite finished reading the book on true curses by the time Madam Pince came around to kick students out of the library for the night, but he learned all he really needed to know for now. Now all that was left for him to do was wait until it was sufficiently dark out to sneak from the dorms and meet with the others.

Child's play.

"Evening Voulgeneb." Cedric greeted him at the edge of the forbidden forest.

Krum, who Cedric had picked up from the Slytherin dorms due to their proximity to Hufflepuff, gave him a polite nod as he appeared with Fleur, whom he himself had picked up from the carriage for obvious reasons.

"Evening Paddle Butt. Any trouble in the dungeons?"

"Nice and peaceful."

"Right on."

Now all that was left to do was wait for their new benefactor to arrive. It was a quiet and chilly night, which gave Fleur all the excuse she needed to cozy on up to him. That was nice. Wasn't enough to keep his mind from wandering though

"So uh, hey Trionskin?"

Grunt.

"Your beard is growing really fast." And it was. It was already almost as thick as the buzzcut on his head.

Grunt.

"Are you taking some kind of potion to make it grow faster?"

"I bought a cream I rub on my face. Make beard grow faster."

Mystery solved.

"I'm sure that'll make Hermione very happy."

Affirmative grunt.

Fortunately their wait had ended with the arrival of their new mentor. The crushing of leaves beneath his padded feet announced his arrival.

* * *

Cathars were a sect of Christianity centered

* * *

**Chapter 5 Preview:**

**The return of Padfoot**

* * *

"None of you have ever use The Throne?" Sirius said, aghast.

The blank expressions and shrugs they gave the old dog seemed to only disappoint him further

"How have none of you ever taken a deuce on the throne? Well we're going to solve this right now. Who needs to use the toilet?"

Viktor raised a hesitant hand.

"Come with me. All of you."

The four teenagers followed their pet dog under their invisibility cloaks. Their path lead them back into the castle, up four floors and down several twisting corridors until they stopped beside an empty stretch of wall with a suspiciously low wall sconce.

Sirius reached behind the sconce and grabbed hold of an easy to miss rubber ball and yanked on it, revealing it to be a toilet pull chain.

The blank piece of wall melted away like hot wax to be replaced by a regal wooden door with smoky stainglass windows.

Sirius turned the tiny knob and opened the door,revealing a small closet with a massive throne. It was identical in every way to the overly ornate chair Dumbledore sat on at the head table, save for the seat itself which was that of a cushioned porcelain toilet seat.

In any non-magical setting the idea of a cushioned toilet seat sounded like a horribly unsanitary thing to put your buttocks on. But in Hogwarts there was plenty of magic, and house elves, to keep such a thing sanitary, clean and dry.

"Mister Krum, if you would kindly enter, and if the rest of you would kindly give the door some space and privacy."

Viktor entered the cramped throne room and the others backed away until they had nearly turned a corner. And then they waited.

A few minutes later - nervous bladder there Viktor? - their Bulgarian friend emerged from the throne room, shuffling like a zombie. As they approached him Harry saw that he seemed to be in a slack-jawed daze. The man was barely coherent.

"Well!?" Sirius prodded.

"I have gazed upon the face of God." Viktor told them. "And he is smiling down upon us all with much benevolence and pride."

* * *

**Notes:**

The Cathars were a Christian sect centered in France during the 13th century, or the 1200s. Hogwarts was founded around 1000 AD. To square this circle I am staying that Cathars existed in magical France as early as 1100 AD(Remember, wizards and witches live a very long time), around the time the house ghosts were alive.

Also Sir Nicholas is obviously French, I mean, come on.

**Reviews:**

**Aqua Lillyasked:**

Do you know of any stories similar to yours?

**Response:**

**Harry Potter and the rites of blood by Daedros27.** People have asked me if it's actually my story that I wrote under a different pseudonym. Sadly, it isn't, but it's no mystery why they would think it.

**The Lie I've Lived and Bungle in The Jungle**(and it's sequal, T**urn me loose**) are also really close. Bungle in the jungle is in the second person so it's difficult to read at first and there's some character bashing and dumb stuff near the beginning you need to get past, and but holy shit is it hilarious and excellent if you stick to it.

**The Wizard Who Meddled with Time by Arian2423 and Havoc Side of the Force by Tsu Doh Nim** were both huge inspirations on my writing style and I hope are similar enough.

Honorable mentions that are similar to my work is **Phantasy by tsume Yuki**, particularly when the trio decided to start pranking.

_IF ANY OF YOU WANT TO RECOMMEND STORIES SIMILAR TO MINE, LEAVE THEM IN A REVIEW OR MESSAGE ME AND ILL LIST THEM IN THE NEXT CHAPTER._

**_GhostSixTwo Wrote:_**

omg I love this story. It had me laughing so hard I couldn't breath not once, not twice, and not even three times, but a grand total of 7 times from chapter 1 to 3. As you can tell I loved the humor in this story, especially the part with Dumbledore and fawkes, the marauders history lol. keep up the good work and I can't wait for the next chapter. peace

**Response:**

Now see, I love hearing about exactly which parts make the reader laugh. It the future if you can quote which particular lines did the job so I can craft my humor more in the future, that would be greeeeeeaaaaat.

**IWantABetterWebsite Wrote:**

This story is insane and I kind of love it.

That being said, I am worried that these new Marauders aren't getting up to much while sober. They seem more interested in figuring out what they did and how they did it, which is understandable, but I hope that won't be it for their pranking

**Response:**

If this chapter hasn't assuaged your fears, then the next one certainly will.

**ThingsCanBeTwoThings Wrote:**

I'm really enjoying this story, and looking forward to seeing more. There's a bit of confusion when you cover a lot of narrative ground quickly and in following Harry's train of thought sometimes, but all in all, excellent story with a great command of tone.

**Response:**

Regarding confusion in regards to following Harry's train of thought, all I can say is:

GOOD!


	5. Chapter 5: Lessons from the Master

**The Marauding Champions**

* * *

**Chapter 5:**

**Lessons from the Master**

* * *

**ALERT:**

If you are a returning reader **go back** to the previous chapter. I made some serious **changes,** all during the scene where the **House Ghosts explain the curse.**

Just go back and **reread** that part or else you'll be confused in later chapters.

On with the show.

* * *

The massive black dog padded towards them from the deep shadows of the forbidden forest. The unfortunate shape of his jaw, as always, forced his teeth to be exposed in what looked like a snarl to the untrained eye. The entire scene was rather frightening and made Harry regret failing to warn his fellow champions about Padfoot's resemblance to a Grim.

Fleur pressed herself even harder against his back, though this time not for the warmth, while Cedric and Viktor both went for their wands.

Then, in a flash of stretching anatomy, Padfoot morphed into Sirius. He had recovered greatly from his time spent in Azkaban. For once he looked the epitome of a proper pureblood, with his hair combed, his dress robes vibrant and recently pressed. Were it not for his warm smile it would be easy to recognize why so many people thought he was one of Voldemort's most faithful.

"The box!" Sirius drawled in his best imitation of a deep voice as he dropped his smile. "You opened it. We came!"

... Harry did not understand the joke.

"Sadly, the other cenobites are either dead, in hiding or hormonal this time of the month so it's just me today." Sirius continued while still sounding, well, serious.

Harry still did not understand the joke. Fortunately, Sirius dropped the facade and opened his arms towards Harry in the universal sign of "Come give me a hug!"

"Sirius!" Harry exclaimed as he rushed forward and embraced his godfather.

Mmm. He smelled of sandalwood and tobacco.

"Oh! It's good to see you Prongslet!" Sirius exclaimed back as he crushed the life out of him. "Though I hear you've earned a new nickname?"

Harry broke their embrace and smiled, before waving towards his friends.

"Allow me to introduce the new Marauders." He said, pointing to each person in turn. "Hailing from Bulgaria we have TrionSkin. From France we have the lovely part-Veela, Firebird. And our two hometeam players PaddleCul, and yours truly, VulgeNeb."

Each person bowed or curtsied as they were introduced. Harry went so far as to give Sirius a sweeping bow so deep his messy hair scraped the snow as he revealed his own new name.

Sirius' grin stretched from ear to ear at the news that Harry was sure the old dog must have guessed. He'd left enough hints in his letter.

"Spectacular! And have the house ghosts given you the rundown?"

They all grumbled unintelligibly at Padfoot's question. Sirius must have had super hearing though because he seemed to catch it all.

"Yeah, kind of an unfair deal. It's one thing to miss the small print in a contract, it's another to be forced into it without ever getting the chance to read it first. Though you'd know all bout that, eh VoulgeNeb?"

Harry groaned again. He had somehow managed to convince himself that he wasn't being forced to compete in the deadly Triwizard Tournament. Their string of pranking had certainly helped take his mind off of it. Then reality had to come barreling back into his delusion.

"So! What are your forms?"

The quartet shared a glance.

"Well, Trionskin is a shark, we have no doubt bout that, and PaddleCul here is probably a beaver." Harry explained.

"Or a platypus." Viktor interjected.

"Or possibly a platypus." Harry amended. "But we have no earthly clue what I am."

Sirius was now glaring at them like they were morons.

"How in the world do you not know your forms?"

"It's a long story involving mind-altering drugs. Ill explain later. For now we need your help." Harry dodged.

"Oh yes. You mentioned needing advice on a small-time prank war you're having with Arthur's crotch fruit. Tell me what you've been trying."

"Well, we really wanted to keep things simple and stick to the classics. Wedgies, short sheeting, plastic wrap on toilet seats." Harry explained. "The short sheeting was childs play, but our attempts at the other two ran into difficulties."

Cedric took it from there.

"We can't exactly put plastic wrap on all of the toilet seats in the castle. Because after the first unintended target makes a mess out of things, the prank is over."

Sirius nodded knowingly as Harry continued.

"And our attempts at giving each-other wedgies with a summoning charm have resulting in us crashing into each other or getting a fistful of panties."

Fleur giggled at that one.

"Hopefully ze next time you use zat on me it will be in a more romantic setting." She teased from his shoulder with a flirtatious smile.

"And hopefully I don't send any feminine hygiene product flying along with your lace." Harry retorted, before remembering they had company. "I mean! You all didn't need to hear that."

Fleur had descended into a deep blush and returned to burying her face in Harry's back to hide her shame.

Sirius gave them a curious, and somewhat suspicious, look during the entire explanation. That definitely wasn't how Harry had planned to introduce their relationship to his godfather, but considering their nature as pranksters it seemed more appropriate than an awkward family dinner.

"Well..." Sirius began before shaking his head and returning to his mirthful self. "The wedgie issue is easily solved. Summon the tags on the underwear and cancel after half a second. Instant wedgie."

"Ohhhhhh!" Harry, Viktor, Fleur and Cedric chorused.

"The plastic wrap prank was something we agonized over too. But we eventually came up with a solution." Sirius explained, while beckoning them to come closer so he could whisper his revelation to them. "An exceptionally convoluted and complicated solution, but one that works. You see, we carved in a water shielding rune array into every toilet in Hogwarts. One set to activate in the presence of somebody tagged with a simple activation marker."

The other three champions shared an expression of "eureka!" at the explanation but Harry needed that last bit explained. Fleur noticed his confusion and took the liberty.

"An activation marker is just a spell zat marks a person or object with a signature tied to a rune array, like ze wards of a house, so the ward knows to exclude or include you in eets effects."

Bitchin!

"So we just have to tag our target with a simple charm and suddenly every toilet in the school will refuse them access?" Harry clarified.

"Rightio. And nobody else will make a mess, exempting those who tend to make a mess in the bathroom all on their own. Disgusting animals." Sirius groused

Cedric, Viktor and Fleur turned their focus to Harry.

"So. Fearless leader." Said Cedric. "What are your orders?"

Oh, Harry was the leader now? That's rich.

"Tonight let's tackle the common room toilets. I'll take care of the Gryffindor toilets, PaddleCul takes Hufflepuff, TrionSkin takes Slytherin since they have the Durmstrang students bunking there." They nodded in turn. "I'll try to tag the twins in their sleep, but they should only run into problems in Gryffindor tower... for the first day."

Realization dawned on the others as he spoke,

"But by the end of the week they'll only be able to piss in the sinks, yes?" Viktor summarized.

"Exactly! We activate the rune wards on the public toilets all over Hogwarts at our leisure, but we will get them all. And we can watch the misery set in as they resort to sneaking into the other common rooms and finding no shelter." Harry concluded.

"We will need to infiltrate ze Ravenclaw common room zho." Fleur countered. "Especially since eet eez closest to Gryffindor. And I might as well try to enchant ze carriage toilets."

"I _could_ handle the Ravenclaw toilets on my own." Sirius interjected. "But I think I should leave that to you guys. Discovering the secret to entering another common room is a real rush, and I would never deny it to you all."

Harry nodded. Who didn't enjoy a good challenge?

"Oh! And don't forget the private restrooms." Sirius added. "Every faculty member has their own private quarters, complete with shower and toilet. You'll have to activate those too. And of course the throne."

Throne?

Harry shared a confused look with his fellow Marauders.

"None of you have ever used _The Throne_?" Sirius said, aghast.

The blank expressions and shrugs they gave the old dog seemed to only disappoint him further

"How have none of you ever taken a deuce on the throne? Well we're going to solve this right now. Who needs to use the toilet?"

Viktor raised a hesitant hand.

"Come with me. All of you." Sirius commanded before transforming back into Padfoot.

The four teenagers followed their pet dog under their invisibility cloaks. Their path lead them back into the castle, up four floors and down several twisting corridors until they stopped beside an empty stretch of wall with a suspiciously low wall sconce.

Sirius, who was now Sirius again, reached behind the sconce and grabbed hold of an easy to miss rubber ball and yanked on it, revealing it to be a toilet pull chain.

The blank piece of wall melted away like hot wax to be replaced by a regal wooden door with smoky, stain-glass windows.

Sirius turned the tiny knob and opened the door, revealing a small closet with a massive throne. It was identical in every way to the overly ornate chair Dumbledore sat on at the staff table, save for the seat itself which was that of a cushioned porcelain toilet seat.

In any non-magical setting the idea of a cushioned toilet seat sounded like a horribly unsanitary thing to put your buttocks on. But in Hogwarts there was plenty of magic, and house elves, to keep such a thing sanitary, clean and dry.

"Mister Krum, if you would kindly enter, and if the rest of you would kindly give the door some space and privacy."

Viktor entered the cramped throne room and the others backed away until they had nearly turned a corner. And then they waited.

A few minutes later - nervous bladder there Viktor? - their Bulgarian friend emerged from the throne room shuffling like a zombie. As they approached him Harry saw that he seemed to be in a slack-jawed daze. The man was barely coherent.

"Well!?" Sirius prodded.

"I have gazed upon the face of God." Viktor told them. "And he is smiling down upon us all with much benevolence and pride."

It took Viktor three whole minutes to come down from the turd he likened to a spiritual experience, but eventually he was lucid enough to pay attention to Sirius' explanation.

"Since we're all here, we have a golden opportunity to teach you how to activate the rune array."

He opened the door to the throne room and immediately shut it again.

Sirius then turned his eyes to Viktor, confusion written on his face.

"Bulgarian food." Viktor said simple. "Vicious going in, vicious coming out."

"But the toilets are all built with air cleansing and odor eliminated enchantments!" Sirius practically yelled.

Viktor shrugged.

"Like I said. Bulgarian food."

They ended up having to sneak down the hall to a public bathroom where Sirius gave them a crash course on finding the rune arrays, which were cleverly hidden beneath the lip of the toilet bowl, the part that's impossible to clean, and activating them. They then went their separate ways, with Sirius promising to visit them again by the end of the week to help train them as animagi. He shook all of their hands as he left, though Harry had to practically pry Fleur off of him to say goodbye to his godfather. The handshake she shared with him seemed unusually tense.

"So, uh, Firebird." Harry broached as they sneaked back to the Bauxbaton's Carriage beneath his family cloak.

"Hm?"

"You were really quiet tonight. I thought you were just being sensitive to the cold, but looking back you seemed... afraid."

She sighed.

"Your godfazzar. I am frightened of him."

Harry had to stop walking at the confession. He forced eye contact with his girlfriend even though it was too dark to properly see her.

"What? Why?!" He demanded in a hushed tone.

She huffed, clearly not expecting an interrogation. If her date with Davies at the Yule ball was any indication, she probably wasn't used to being talked back to by boys.

"Reverse ze roles and imagine how you would feel."

Huh?

"Imagine if you were seventeen and in love wiz a fourteen year old girl." Harry's heart fluttered at the implied confession, but he didn't comment on it. Shit! Was he turning into a girl? "And you met her godfazzar, or fazzer, who was not only a war veteran, but had been falsely convicted and imprisoned for mass murder. Imagine, also, if he spent twelve years in ze most terrifying prison on ze planet, escaped from said prison, and was a wanted fugitive."

Harry had to admit it. She had a point.

"I am surprised he didn't steal me away to show me his mounted gun collection and shovel." She went on. "Papa kept scaring my boyfriends off with zat speech."

"Er, how many boyfriends?" Harry couldn't stop himself from asking, the sudden sense of insecurity demanded he do so.

He could just make out the comforting smile she put on underneath the cloak before she planted a kiss right on the tip of his nose. And like that his insecurity was replaced by warm fuzzies.

"Relax 'arry. All of my past '_boyfriends_' were as coherent and worzwhile as Rogaire had been. You talk to me, you challenge me. I like zat." She explained, showing off all her teeth as she smiled. It might have been his imagination, but she also seemed to be glowing with a silver aura, just like those cheerleaders at the world cup. "Zho, to be fair to Rogaire, he was actually able to kees me! Ugh! Boys!"

Well that just sounded miserable. Then again, there were quite a few girls in Hogwarts(Ginny) who acted as strangely around him as boys did around Fleur. So he could kinda relate. If he was completely honest with himself he would have made a pass at Ron's sister as far back as second year if it weren't for her behavior. She was a very pretty redhead after all, who doesn't like those?

Still. Fleur had assuaged his concerns so Harry ought to return the favor. It was the boyfriend thing to do.

"Relax Fleur. You don't have to worry about Sirius threatening or disliking you." He cooed, bringing her in for an embrace.

"Are you sure? He must zink I am manipulating you with my allure because of your fame. A lot of Veela do zat, seducing rich or famous men for sport."

"Of course not!" He consoled. "He's probably immensely proud of me for having caught such a pretty bird as you, pardon the pun."

She giggled at the terrible joke, bringing a hand up to wipe away a tear he hadn't known was there before.

"I promise you, he finds the entire situation incredibly amusing."

* * *

Sirius black was not amused.

Some part-Veela hussy had gotten her claws on his young and impressionable godson. As much as he loved Harry like his own flesh and blood, the boy was very clearly a late bloomer, just as James and Lily had been.(The girl hadn't sprouted until their fifth year, but BOY did she sprout!) He was all but positive Harry didn't even have pubes yet, let alone a healthy - or was it unhealthy? - interest in the opposite sex. But that did not preclude him from falling under magical influences, whether by love potions or magical aura.

He had really meant to have a long talk with him about the dangers starstruck or lascivious girls posed. Especially the upper year ones, as his own father had warned him that there are bad women out there who will try to get preggers by him because of their lust for his family wealth. It was a speech that really fucked up Sirius' views on romance, especially since his miserly cynic of a father had failed to counter it with a speech on how to identify and court the GOOD women that filled the world.

Sirius wasn't even given the chance to teach Harry prophylactic charms for God's sake! Let alone the awkward and hilarious bird and bees discussion over firewhiskey. He had so been looking forward to doing that this year.

And now he was under the spell of an upper year girl, a seventh year no less. He was so far out of his depth, dating a woman with three whole years of experience over him. This wasn't even mentioning how she was French, and the legendary levels of propriety and chastity French witches displayed. And by legendary, he meant existing only in legend.

What was her angle? Was she after his fame? The family wealth he was due to inherit upon reaching majority? Was it as simple and petty as trying to get the extra advantage over him in this god-forsaken tournament?

This went beyond sneaking her off to Grimmauld place and showing off the Black gun and shovel collection.

After all, for what other reason would a seventeen year old girl, practically a woman, pursue his boy? A boy who didn't even have shoulders yet!

Sirius couldn't think of any, but he did know one thing for sure. With his hunt for Peter resulting in a cold trail, Fudge and Crouch Sr being beyond his reach and Voldemort being MIA, Fleur Delacour was now at the tippity top of his shit list. If for no other reason than accessibility. This is why he decided to spend the rest of his week loitering at the edges of the forbidden forest as Padfoot where he could keep a close eye on the going-ons at Hogwarts, and one silver-haired wench in particular.

After all he had nothing better to do.

Not a single. Fucking. Thing.

* * *

The next morning saw Harry getting up bright and early, having set his alarm to wake him in time to wait outside of the communal bathroom.(Which was much cleaner than the girl's, thank you very much!) Once again donning his father's cloak and crouching in a dark corner while he waited.

He had activated the ward schemes before going to bed the night before, but even he wasn't full-hearty enough to sneak into the sixth year dormitories and try to tag the twins in their sleep. He knew what came from trying to prank the twins in revenge on their own turf. Everyone knew. It only took one person to try.

Poor Percy. He never was the same after that.

As he waited, Lee Jordan came down no less than six times to relieve himself. You really should have Pomfrey look at that Lee. Could be an infection, compliment of those Slytherin girls you keep sneaking off with. And maybe stop bragging about how the supposedly chaste pureblood girls are a bunch of coal-burning mudsharks while you're at it? It's not very nice. Least of all to you.

His opportunity eventually came just before dawn when Fred - or maybe George? - came racing down from the sixth year dorms in what looked like a urinary emergency. Perfect. He tagged the redhead from around the corner just as he entered the common toilet.

He only had to wait a few moments before the chaos began.

"Oh no! Oh god! What the F..."

Who knew Fred had such a high-pitched scream?

Curiosity won out and Harry peered into the toilets.

Shit. Shit everywhere. If you could imagine somebody loading a shotgun with rabbit dropping soaked in olive oil and firing a couple dozen shots in the bathroom, that's what it looked like. Sirius failed to warn them that the rune scheme didn't just make a mess out of morning leaks. Not that it would have dissuaded him in the slightest.

Fred had gotten the brunt of it and was naturally freaking the fuck out. Harry took a second to ponder why the redhead didn't clean himself off with his wand before realizing he must have forgotten it in his rush to reach the toilet.

Amateur mistake there Gred.

Quietly closing the door, Harry layered on a silencing charm and all eighteen locking and repelling wards he knew onto the wooden frame. All were spells utterly impossible to break through without a wand, and nobody would be coming to help for a good half hour at least, save for maybe sir-piss-a-lot, Lee Jordan. But Harry doubted the dreadlock-rocking sex-machine would opt to spend the time necessary to tear down his wards instead of fleeing through the common room and down the hall towards the seventh floor toilets.

Today was looking to be a fun day. Now where was he going to find a shotgun and rabbit droppings at this hour?

* * *

**Chapter 6 Preview:**

**Luna Lovegood**

* * *

Harry and Viktor walked along the line of second and third year students. It had taken Cedric using all of his clout and charm on Cho, but they had managed to setup a Seeker training day for underclassman. It also took the baited promise that Harry and Viktor would loan out their Firebolts so the seeker hopefuls would experience what seeking is like at high speed, the way professionals play. The high turnout could also be explained by the fact that the "study group" was being taught by none other than the star seeker of Hogwarts; Harry Potter, with assistance from the little known professional player, Viktor Krum.

You probably haven't heard of him. He isn't exactly popular.

There were a good thirty students, mostly third years, from all four houses. Harry couldn't wait to see Draco's temper tantrum when he learned they excluded him from the event. Cho and Cedric had at least been invited to help, but apparently preferred to have their own _private practice_ away prying eyes.

Perverts. He was surrounded by perverts.

Their first order of business was to examine the brooms for any defects or jinxes. The lessons would begin by having the underclassman practice a few basic drills on their own brooms, or school brooms, before pairing them up and teaching them how to handle the much more dangerous Firebolts. Safety first after all.

There were a few obvious contenders, like Astoria Greengrass who had dreams of playing on the "might is right" all male Slytherin team. Good luck with that Greengrass. Ginny was obviously there too, standing in line with her hand-me-down Cleansweep 7. This confused Harry, seeing as her older brothers had Cleansweep fives.

"Oh it's Charlie's old broom." Ginny explained as she positively vibrated with excitement for the event. "Mum kept it locked up until she could give it to me for my second year."

Yeah. The Weasley matriarch totally wasn't showing favoritism for her only daughter. Noooooo, none of that going on at all.

Everyone else's brooms were pretty standard, and came out clean during their inspection. That was until they came upon a petite blonde third year hailing from Ravenclaw.

"Er, why is there a teddy bear strapped to the head of your broom?" Harry asked with worry.

Indeed, the wide-eyed girl had strapped a small teddy bear to the very tip of her broom with some kind of clip on cup holder meant for desks and a whole lot of rubber bands. It looked like a childish figurehead for a pirate ship. Wait, were those radishes hanging from her ears?

"Oh that's my copilot, David Bowie." The girl explained with a dreamy voice.

The guy from the labyrinth with a moose knuckle? Ick!

"And, uh, vhy did you name your teddy bear after the singer?" Viktor asked, apparently more familiar with the Muggle actor/musician than Harry was.

"Well because he has a little bow, silly!" She answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world and they were idiots for asking. "And also because his hair is super soft, just like David Bowie's."

Silence met her explanation. Harry didn't know how they did it, but both he and Viktor managed to keep straight faces at her explanation. Viktor recovered first, leaning down into Harry's ear and whispering.

"This girl is an absolute riot. We must keep her around."

Harry wholeheartedly agreed.

* * *

**Notes:**

I have no comments to add here, save to once again remind returning readers that I made changes to the previous chapter and to go reread it.

**Reviews:**

**ThingsCanBeTwoThings Wrote:**

The next chapter looks to be outstanding, if that preview is anything to go by!

I'm fascinated by the marauder curses. I'm trying to parse out the outcomes for the old marauders. Sirius is falsely imprisoned - is James killed by another Marauder? Like how narrowly is that curse defined? Peter was responsible, but so was Voldemort. I guess we'll find out!

**Response:**

I leave that for you to decide, and I hope you went back to read the changes I made to the wording of the curse. Your review partly inspired the edit.

**IWantABetterWebsite Wrote:**

Yes, I am glad to see the pranking progressing.

And my guess for the curse is that Harry will either be the one to kill himself, which he'll do to get rid of the horcrux (but he'll get better), or he'll be the one killed by another Marauder, also possibly to get rid of the horcrux. But more likely is that Fleur will kill him when he's an old man by making his heart give out after a long night of passion.

**Response:**

Why must you spoil the ending for my story?

To quote Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Global Warming Propaganda Girl - "How DARE you!"

**T-Biggz Wrote:**

That preview of chapter 5 had me in TEARS!  
Luna needs more LOVE!  
And if Fred and George are the Marauders of their generation who are the other two who are supposed to round them out?  
I Also recommend the following stories: Haemophilia by Quatermass; Supreme Champion by Haugh Wards; The new Marauders and the Trickster God by JasminSky; A Slytherin way of being by catchingafallingstar; Up yours Dumbles by monbade; The Goblets Revenge by duskglow and Back at Ya by Fairywm. All complete except for Haemophilia and The ne Marauders and the trickster God and they're FANTASTICALLY written.

**Response:**

And I plan to give her plenty of love in this story.

Fred and George aren't Marauders, nor are they the rivals to the Marauders as set by the curse(reread the previous chapter, I made changes)

So. I checked out your recommendations, and I cannot in good conscious recommend them to my readers.

None of them were particularly well written, and the only one I could stand to read until the end was **Back At Ya by Fairywm**, which I would have recommend if the entire thing wasn't an experiment in "Tell, don't show".

Similar critique for **Supreme Champion by Haugh Wards**, along with it being a character bash fest.

My detest for **Up yours Dumbles by monbade** can be summed up with the following critique. Too many macguffins in the kitchen. Seriously, the first chapter introduces a hyperbolic time chamber ripoff(which I'm not opposed to) the prophecy, multiple arranged marriage contracts and then some. Any one of these could be used as the premise to a well written story, or even the same story if they were introduced incrementally.

**A Slytherin way of being** **by catchingafallingstar** was almost good. I can't completely disregard that one, but it's still not in any way similar to my stories, or this one in particular.

I do appreciate you sharing though, really I do. Your review and the questions in them before your recommendations helped me improve the previous chapter.

**alrislir Wrote:**

To be fair, Remus Lupin is a ridiculous name as well, for a werewolf.

**Response:**

You're absolutely right. I have no retort or excuse.


	6. Chapter 6: The Rival Induction

**The Marauding Champions**

* * *

**Chapter 6:**

**The Rival Induction**

* * *

Harry had mail-ordered an enormous collection of books on birds - both of the classical world and the new one - some weeks ago. Due to the unnecessarily slow and complicated process of ordering Muggle picture encylopedias and having them transferred to owl post, they had all just arrived that morning. And so, after taking a bath in Slytherin's Sauna, he'd taken to wasting his mornings flipping to pages at random hoping to find some avian that jumped out to him as deserving of the moniker "_VoulgeNeb_", but none of the flowery creatures detailed in "The Lustrous Birds of Paradise" had a beak worthy of such note.

Interesting plumage? Certainly. Vibrant colors? You bet your bottom Knut. But halberd-like beaks? Not really. Plenty of strange toucans, flambouyant vultures and other things Sirius would find suitable for mailing needs that even the most openly homophilic of South American wizards would never consider for the job.

With a forlorn sight he closed the last of his new books and stood up from the library table to gather his now useless purchases. There were twelve in all, but they were each on the thicker side and flush with illustrations. He chose to forego a lightening charm in favor of challenging himself to carry the behemoths unaided.

Upon reaching the door to the first floor corridor he reconsidered his spontaneous upper body workout and decided they were better off gifted to the school than thrown in the trash he made a pit stop at Madame Pince's desk.

"What're these?" The librarian all but snarled at Harry.

"Errr, donations?" Harry answered nervously.

A few moments later saw Harry exiting the massive library doors with a brand new pass to the restricted section in his hands, compliments of an ecstatic librarian for whom Christmas had come early... Or perhaps late? The librarian put him under strict orders to not tell anyone about the secret rule only the Ravenclaw house - and Hermione - knew. That if you donate ten unique books or more you get one free pass to the restricted section. Good for one rental.

Harry had every intention of keeping this secret to himself. All the better to abuse it without the competition.

He felt a vibration from his pocket and withdrew the handmirror shaped messenger Fleur had crafted some days before. He unclasped it to read the message inside.

_Forge spotted fntering infirmary escorting one Lee Jordan. He's all yours VoulgeNeb_

_\- PaddleCul_

Harry smiled at Cedric's message and noted that it was indeed his turn to go on 'patrol'. He and the other Marauders and been taking turns tormenting the twins whenever they could catch one alone.

There was also the fact that Lee had taken six whole days to finally go see Madame Pomfrey about his, ehem, bladder problem. A factoid which was enough to make Harry giggle visciously enough to encourage a passing group of Slytherin seventh years to give him a wider berth. H

He needed to work on his evil laughter. It was working too well, and that just won't do.

His trip to the infirmary was uneventful in the extreme. Not even Peeves saw fit to make an appearance. The poltergeist's recent bout of inactivity had not gone unnoticed among the Hogwarts population; Harry least of all. Cedric tried to console him that it was nothing to worry about, but he wasn't so easily put at ease.

He came up near the infirmary and wedged himself behind a suit of armour who grunted in annoyance at the intrusion.

_Hiding out near the infirmary. If he shows his face I'll get him._

_\- VoulgeNeb_

The ink faded almost as soon as he finished penning his message, but would remain on the other pieces of parchment until such time as the owner saw fit to write a response. And so Harry waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Geez, what was taking so long? Muggle medicine could cure that right up with just two pills... Or so he'd heard, not that Harry could recall where. Maybe he'd overheard his aunt or uncle discussing a similar issue to the one Lee was currently suffering from? Vernon's hygeine was such that an infection was inevitable in the event that those two ever reignited the romance in their relationship.

Harry shuddered at the mental image that line of thought summoned. It resembled a hippopotamus struggling to mount a giraffe in front of a African Safari tour bus.

His prey finally stalked out of the hospital wing with a limp followed closely by Lee Jordan, who was limping in an entirely different way. Both kept peering over their shoulders as if they expected something untiward to happen to them. Trelawney taught them well if they had such an astute sixth sense, or in Fred's case basic pattern recognition.

You can only be viciously pranked so many times while alone before deciding solitude is an unwise state to be in.

Harry, seeing his opportunity while both of his upperclassmen were peering around a corner, pointed his wand in Fred's general direction and whispered that most beloved word.

"Accio."

The earth rending noise of fabric ripping and a nearly grown man screaming like a little girl echoed through the castle as a long, stretchy band of fabric came hurtling towards his hiding place. Harry caught the waistband to Fred's tighty whities just as the redhead fell to the ground in uncontrollable laughter, the kind that comes out of you when you're punched really hard in the stomach, or hit your funny bone on a piece of furniture... or take a nasty fall off of your broom.

It was the kind of laughter that served as the ultimate proof of a wedgie well-performed, but Harry didn't have time to listen to such sweet music. It was time to make his escape.

He unclasped the butt flap of the suit of armor and blew a cold breath into the cavity withing.

"Oooh hoo hoo!" The suit of armour squeeled in embarassment before the trapdoor beneath his feet flew upwards, raising the Knight with it.

Harry leapt down into a twisting slide,only to be deposited in a particularly damp section of the dungeons moments later. After checking if the coast was clear he withdrew the pocket clasp and wrote to the others.

_I not only got his tag, I got the entire damn waistband. You all lose the bet. Pay up._

_\- Voulgeneb_

Harry could hear their expletives in his mind as if by telepathy as the ink dried. They should have known better than to make such a bet with him

Sure, they were all older than him, more educated that him, and for the most part more magically powerful than him, but there was one advantage he had that they could never hope to compete with.

His summoning charm was stupidly overpowered.

He lifted his latest trophy up to the torch light and realized his spell was more stupidly overpowered than even he knew. He had, somehow, torn the entire rubber waistbnd of Fred's underwear and summoned it to him without tearing it. It was a perfect ring of cloth, untorn in any place.

"How in the hell?"

But this curiosity escaped his attention once he noticed another detail.

_Ew there's blood on it. I think I might have ripped his taint._

* * *

It took nearly a week of planning, debating and back-stabbing but their plan for sneaking into Ravenclaw tower was finally being executed.

Cedric had suggested he simply ask his hot asian girlfriend - and yes, he did use those exact words - where the secret entrance was, but Viktor shot the idea down as it defeated the purpose of the challenge. To track down and find a room without any help, that was their mission, and by god they would carry it out!

So here they were, on the Quidditch pitch, with all of the team hopefuls lined up.

The idea was to put tracking spells on the Ravenclaw students and then search the general area of the castle where the tracking spells inevitably stopped working - as they tended to do when nearing the common room of a school house or other secret room. It was actually a decent way to discover if there was a secret room present. Put a tracking spell on a piece of parchment and thoroughly search the general surroundings when it fails.

It was the searching part that always proved difficult. I mean, who thinks to tickle the pear on a painting or sniff a fabric rose or blow cold air up a suit of arkours arse!?

"They are vaitinf for us, let us put on a show." Viktor whispered to him as the alarm for 5am rang.

Only the truly committed would come down to the quidditch pitch before dawn, and it was the truly committed they wanted.

Harry and Viktor walked along the line of second and third year students. It had taken Cedric using all of his clout and charm on Cho, but they had managed to setup a Seeker training day for underclassman by putting up flyers in every common room save Slytherin, where Viktor simply handed them out to the tiniest snakes he could find.

It also took the baited promise that Harry and Viktor would loan out their own persoaml Firebolts so the seeker hopefuls would experience what seeking is like at high speed, the way professionals play. The high turnout could also be explained by the fact that the "study group" was being taught by none other than the star seeker of Hogwarts; Harry Potter, with assistance from the little known professional player, Viktor Krum.

You probably haven't heard of him. He isn't that big of a deal.

There were a good thirty students, mostly third years, from all four houses. Harry couldn't wait to see Draco's temper tantrum when he learned they excluded him from the event. Count on Slytherin's to be the only ones honestly capable of keeping a secret. Cho and Cedric had at least been invited to help, but they apparently preferred to have their own _private practice_ away from prying eyes.

Perverts. He was surrounded by perverts.

Their first order of business was to examine the brooms for any defects or jinxes. The lessons would begin by having the underclassman practice a few basic drills on their own brooms, or school brooms for those who didn't have their own, before pairing them up and teaching them how to handle the much more dangerous Firebolt. Safety first after all.

There were a few obvious contenders, like Astoria Greengrass who had dreams of playing on the "might makes right" all male Slytherin team. Good luck with that Greengrass. Ginny was there too, standing in line with her hand-me-down Cleansweep 7. This confused Harry, seeing as her older brothers had Cleansweep fives.

"Oh it's Charlie's old broom." Ginny explained as she positively vibrated with excitement for the event. "Mum kept it locked up until she could give it to me for my second year."

Yeah. The Weasley matriarch totally wasn't showing favoritism for her only daughter. Noooooo, none of that going on at all.

Everyone else's brooms were pretty standard and came out clean during their inspection. That was until they came upon a petite blonde third year hailing from Ravenclaw.

"Er, why is there a teddy bear strapped to the head of your broom?" Harry asked with genuine worry.

Indeed, the wide-eyed girl had strapped a small teddy bear to the very tip of her broom with some kind of clip on cup holder meant for desks and a whole lot of rubber bands. It looked like a childish figurehead for a pirate ship. Wait, were those radishes hanging from her ears?

"Oh that's my copilot, David Bowie." The girl explained in a dreamy voice.

The guy from the labyrinth with a moose knuckle? Ick!

"And, uh, vhy did you name your teddy bear after the singer?" Viktor asked, apparently more familiar with the Muggle actor/musician than Harry was.

"Well because he has a little bow, silly!" She answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world and they were idiots for asking. "And also because his hair is super soft, just like David Bowie's."

Silence met her explanation. Harry didn't know how they did it, but both he and Viktor managed to keep straight faces at her explanation. Viktor recovered first, leaning down into Harry's ear and whispering.

"This girl is an absolute riot. We must keep her around."

Harry wholeheartedly agreed.

They moved right onto drills after that. It was a simple matter of flying a short course of illusionary rings, one of the first spells team captains taught new players right after the cushioning charm. Harry had never been very good with illusion magic and couldn't maintain more than four at a time, but he covered this by being a very quick cast, able to make new ones appear the moment someone flew past the first in a series.

His courses were much more dynamic and unpredictable as a result, while Viktors were more static since he conjured his many dozens of rings all at once.

"How are you so good at planning courses?" Viktor pleaded after Ginny ended her tryout by collapsing into a panting heap. "You are a master at illusion magic if you can keep such intricate paths in mind and also hide the illusions until needed. You should look into more advanced magic of the field."

Harry didn't have the heart to tell Viktor that he made the courses up as he went and that it was likely his worst branch of magic, right behind alchemy, which he couldn't wrap his head around even in the most abstract sense.

They continued like this for twenty minutes, both seekers trailing behind the smaller flyers as they danced to their tune. It wasn't until Dennis Creevey ate shit - hard - that they concluded this part of the tryouts.

"Sometimes you have to admire how noobs brush off what look like injurious crashes as if they were nothing." Harry whispered to Viktor as the house elves brought out a light breakfast.

They watched Dennis sprint ahead of his competitors towards the green little goblinoids without so much as a limp.

"Indeed. He could make a fine keeper."

Harry looked at his fellow champion askance.

"But he's so thin, and tiny. Wouldn't that be a seekers build?"

"Maybe, but he is tough as nails. Keepers need to be able to brush off bludgeors, as they are the most oft targeted. Us seekers rarely can."

Harry tried to think of a single time he'd been hit by a bludgeor without it resulting in greivous injury and came up with nothing. He really did have a bit of a glass jaw in that department didn't he? No wonder Oliver had put more focus on dodging drills for Harry than blocking drills.

After thier quick breakfast they played a quick pickup game with what few students remained. There were actually enough players for almost three whoke teams, but they decided both teams would have two keepers and five chasers a piece with Viktor and Harry playing as opposing seekers, naturally.

"I vil take moon girl." Viktor announced the moment they began divying up the players.

Luna tilted her head and pointed a finger to her chest, as if to ask "who, me?".

Harry would not let this indignity stand.

"Please excuse Mr Krum, he doesn't understand the concept of hometeam players getting first pick. Luna, you're with my team." Harry countered, lightly shoving Viktor away.

"Please excuse Mr Potter, he does not seem to understand how puny he is." Viktor retorted

He then lifted Harry up by his underarms, effortlessly turned him upside down and lightly placed him back on the ground head first, leaving him to collapse in a heap under his own weight. And thus Luna ended up on Viktor's team.

It's always nice to know that disagreements that defy being resolved through words, can always be mediated through good old fashioned bullying.

* * *

**Elsewhere in the castle:**

"Vere is he!? Vere is that vretched poltergeist!?" The wiry Durmstrang student demanded as he and Hermione rounded the corner to the seventh floor.

They both slipped on the algae-like slime they were dripping in and fell into a heap in front of a tapestry depicting Barnebus the Barmy teaching a trio of trolls how to dance in tutus.

"I hope you know he is, in all likelihood, leading us into a much nastier trap?" Hermione huffed at the man, Poliakoff if she remembered correctly.

He looked much better without food dribbled allover his front for a change. She'd had the misfortune of meeting the loser when Viktor insisted on spending time with unclean foreigner. Why her boyfriend valued this man's friendship, she would never understand.

"I don't care! I have a spirit banishing curse and I know how to use it!"

Hermione knew enough to recognize such a curse was solidly in the "dark magic" category and took it as a confirmation that Bulgarian law was much more lax on what magic was acceptable than England.

"Do you know nothing about Peeves! Don't you think we've tried to get rid of him?! Why, In1876, caretaker Rancorous Carpe..."

"Yes yes, I know. He used weapons as bait to lure him into a bell jar trap. The entire castle had to be evacuated." Poliacoff dismissed her with a wave as he picked himself up and offered her a hand.

The fact he actually knew such a on pieceobscure piece of trivia was enough to give Hermione pause.

"How do you know that?" She demanded as she refused his hand and rose to her feet by her own power.

"I vead about it in Hogvarts: a History."

... Well that's a first!

"But then, what makes you think you can succeed where others have failed?" She asked, genuinely curious.

The thin man smiled at her in such a way that showed off every piece of plaque in his teeth

"Because my deer, those others did not have access to the spell that I have access to."

Hermione cringed at the term of endearment, but marched on through the conversation anyways.

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because it is a spell of mine own creation."

Hermione balked at the hubris in his statement. She was the only person she knew who could get away with so matter-of-factly hyping up her own genius. And yet here was this, this... Honestly he came across as an unlikeable school nerd, the kind that obsessed over some piece of media or another at the expense of his social life or personal hygeine. The kind of nerd her parents worked very hard to prevent her from becoming. Her hair used to be much worse berore her mother started threatening to cut it all off if she didn't start washing it properly.

Good thing she got that kind of discipline before attending Hogwarts. Shame this man's parents didn't do the same for him.

"A spell you invented you say? I suppose that would make miss Granger the Innovator?" Peeves' voice echoed from behind them.

They turned from the tapestry to find a door that wasn't there before; a door that stood ajar revealing a room of absolutely gargantuan proportions. A room filled to the brim with mountains of furniture, books, trunks, clothes, plates and all manner of useless junk. Not that she would ever consider books to be useless junk, no, never. But what was far more interesting than doxxy-infested tapestries and bubbling potion vials were the two figures seated very near the rooms entrance.

"We cordially invite you to be inducted into a rather exclusive club." Mister Filch beckoned as he scratched Mrs Norris behind the ears.

"A club that permits not but two new members every generation, and which we have been tasked with inducting since the school itself was founded." Said Peeves in an uncharacteristically respectful tone.

"Though you should know, it's quite cursed." Filch warned.

"Not that you have the power to refuse anyways." Peeves shrugged.

Hermione glanced between the two figures as she digested the implications of what the Poltergeist just said. She stared at Filch, the man she had been lead to believe was a mere squib, and came to the realization that he wasn't even a man at all. His deep red eyes, identical to that of his cat, seemed to be reading her as easily as a light novel.**(A/N)**

"We have such sights to shooooow you." He growled in a perfect immitation of pinhead.

Needless to say, he had her attention.

* * *

**Notes:**

**No Preview, Sorry.**

For an explanation of that cliffhanger I recommend the video by SuperCarlinBrothers "Harry Potter Theory: Filtch is actually a Poltergeist!?" Which I now take to be canon.

A short chapter, I know, but I've been super busy and am just now starting to wright again. Onto reviews!

**Reviews:**

**Chaos Snow Kitsune ****Wrote:**

I love this story. It's a whole lot of fun.

There is however one thing about it that makes me sad. That being the fact there hadn't been any Marauders since Sirius' time. Mainly because I would have loved it if Tonks had been part of a marauder's group during her time. I could have totally seen her doing that

**Response:**

Not canonically possible in this fanfiction, but you are more than welcome to write your own where she does. And that goes for every one of you readers. Steal from me as much as you like, just let me know so I can read your stories too.

**Ariadne Venegas ****Wrote:**

So Cedric will die becauseHarry wanted to share the victory of the tournament (action of another)

Harry will die trying to destroy the horcrux(EDIT in his forehead)

Maybe Victor will be punished for the cruciatus when imperiused? I hope not and he will be the one estranged.  
Because Fleur could be accused of line theft, but her father is really influential in the french government so it will not last and the estrangement it could be awful because she need to marry Harry, so please no!

**Response**:

Aside from Harry, whose fate is obvious, you are WAAAAAAAY off. You're thinking too in the box, judging by what you read in the canon books. What makes you think Viktor will be put under the imperius in this version of the third task? And I'm not so sure about the line theft trope. I get it in other fanfiction, and it makes sense, but in terms of keeping track of lines of succession doing so maternally is not unheard of.

The hebrews/Jews do so because, and I'm paraphrasing, they have no faith in their wives' ability not to fuck other men. Which I think is a little too cynical, although with every study into the rate of paternity fraud around the world consistently showing 1 in 3 children are not gathered by the man the mother claims, maybe it isn't.

So yes, a Veela line of succession could work very well in the wizarding world.


	7. Chapter 7: Their Forms Revealed

**The Marauding Champions**

* * *

**Chapter 7:**

**Their Forms Revealed**

* * *

Taking turns tormenting the twins became utterly boring after several days. This was especially true after they exhausted every classic prank in the book, to the point that they'd each wedgied one twin or the other to the point of rectal bleeding at least twice. Hell, they managed to discover Ravenclaw's common room by pure accident on their second night of post-curfew exploration. It was a random wooden door atop a random, and uncomfortably narrow, spiral staircase in Ravenclaw tower. Upon it's surface was an eagle knocker.

"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" The knocker had asked them.

Harry's mind had immediately gone to Darwin's theory of evolution, by which the ancestor of the chicken surely layed eggs, and one day instead of the chickens predecessor a chicken hatched from the egg; Ergo, the egg came first. He felt rather clever for coming up with such an answer and was about to tell it to the knocker when Cedric stole his thunder.

"Let's see. I had eggs for breakfast and chicken for lunch, as do most people. So the egg clearly came first."

Motherfucker!

And the door opened too, which just made the theft sting even worse.

Once they finished up adding the poozooka enchantment - as Harry had come to call it in his head - to every toilet in Ravenclaw tower there was no place decent for the twins to relieve themselves save for the private quarters of the Hogwarts faculty. They left those undisturbed, as it would be more entertaining for the redheaded duo to get caught sneaking into McGonagall's bedroom than to have them make a mess.

From there they pulled off every prank in the book.

Thumb tacks on the floor beside their beds? You betcha.

Blow-horn whoopie-cushions enchanted to go off only when one of them sat on a chair? Damn straight.

Harry's personal favorite was when they transfigured every book and school supply in their bags into a different animal and put a delaying charm so that each thing in their school bags ran, flew, scurried, crawled and slithered away all at once. They timed it perfectly so that it would happen while the sixth-years were in potions class too. Snape had a field day taking points from Gryffindor.

At this point all that was left for them to do was kidnap them in the middle of the night - along with their beds - and send them on a voyage out to sea; Which is what they were doing right now.

"Hey Harry, you mind contributing!" Cedric cursed at him.

"Cut me some slack! I'm not accustomed to casting levitation charms while flying." Harry retorted.

And indeed they, along with Viktor, were hovering alongside Gryffindor tower; Their wands raised and levitation charms cast as they cooperatively hovered Fred's bed out through the window; frame, canopy and all.

Under normal circumstance there was no way in hell such a large piece of furniture could fit through the portal, but with Fleurs excellent charm and transfiguration work enlarging the gap to comical proportions it was child's play. And since she hated flying - Veela jokes aside - it was a good role for her to fill while the men did the heavy lifting, figuratively speaking.

Their yelling, fortunately, failed to wake a single soul. It had been Harry's intention to cast silencing charms around the bedroom, but when Cedric mentioned the earmuffs used for herbology class Viktor was dead-set on using those to deafen the entirety of the sixth year dorm. He argued it was more challenging, would allow them to still curse each-other out and fit more into the spirit of things.

The Bulgarian had a unique sense of irony and superstition that seemed to follow neither rhyme nor reason. In all honesty he seemed to be making it up as he went. The guy was inventing new rules and traditions by the day, though all were at least fun or challenging. Harry wondered if Viktor would declare it to be good luck if a certain foul-mouthed blue tit took up nesting in that foliage of pubic hair sprouting from his face.

Probably, Harry concluded.

Through the sweat, precise work and foul language they managed to levitate one bed down to the nearest flying buttress below the window. Then the other bed. Then they repeated the process to the next nearest flying buttress. Then to the roof of an adjoining tower. Then three more levels of buttresses, another roof, another-nother roof, then to an outcropping of stone Fleur insisted was called a triforium - which sparked an entire debate on Gothic architectural terms followed by a discussion on how a castle built in the early middle ages had architectural features ranging from pre-medieval to that of the Victorian era - and then finally, after what felt like hours, two red and gold clad beds sat on the frozen grass of the Hogwarts grounds.

From there casting a few buoyancy and water-proofing charms on their beds and placing them on the calm surface of the black lake was a breeze.

"Bye Fred! Bye George!" Harry yelled out to the pair of bed-boats as they floated towards the dark horizon.

"Have a safe trip!" Yelled Cedric.

"Bon voyage!" Fleur called as she dangled a flowery handkerchief in farewell. The phrase sounded completely different in _actual_ french.

"Be mindful of sharks!" The shark animagi warned the voyagers with a twisted grin.

"Be sure to stop by Majorca! I hear it's lovely this time of year!" Yelled Remus from within their midst.

Harry and company reacted as well as one can be expected to react to a middle-aged former-teacher catching them in the middle of their prank, which is to say, with many four letter words and reactionary spellfire - which thankfully missed the laughing werewolf and howling grim.

"Moony! What are you doing here?!" Harry breathed as he approached the older Marauder and embraced him.

Padfoot, still literally howling with laughter, transformed back into the well-dressed godfather only to continue figuratively howling with laughter. They too, embraced.

"Remus was feeling better from his most recent case of PMS and insisted on meeting the new Marauders." Sirius informed him. "We were just discussing my vacation to Spain when you arrived and we just couldn't resist sneaking up on you."

Harry did the honors of introducing the new mentor.

"TrionSkin, Firebird. This is Remus Lupin, werewolf of the previous generation of Marauders and owner of the venerated title, Moony. PaddleCul, I believe you're familiar with him." Harry introduced.

Remus nodded politely to them and shook each person's hand in turn, except for a blushing Fleur Delacour who received a kiss on the back of her from the dashing lycanthrope. Harry supposed he should feel jealous, but damned if uncle Moony didn't deserve a dazzling smile from a French Veela every now and then. The guy has it tough.

"Wait wait wait." Krum interrupted when the information Harry just revealed finally registered. "You're a werewolf?"

Remus nodded hesitantly.

"And your name is... Lupin?"

Cedric sniggered and Remus' concerned look turned to one of annoyance. No doubt he was worried Viktor would take issue with his condition, not mock his name.

"I know right?" Said Cedric. "The whole school was up in arms about the ridiculous name when news of his condition got out. Was there really a point in picking a Marauder Alias? Lupin would have done just fine."

Harry's fellow Marauders kept on laughing at the poor man, even Fleur, though she tried to hide it behind a hand over her mouth.

Remus held up a hand to silence them and succinctly explained the tragic story Harry had heard once before, when he himself had brought it up.

"A serial biter by the name of Fenrir Greyback targeted my family due to our surname with the intention of turning us all. He thought it ironic and humorous to turn a family with the name Lupin into werewolves as well, sadly only I survived."

Well, that sobered them all up something fierce. Maybe there's a lesson here about not making fun of people's names? Harry couldn't bring himself to rub it in just yet, but he'd save it for later in case he ever needed shaming material.

"Now that the mandatory verbal ass-whooping is done with, let us get on with our business for the day." Sirius said before opening his robes to reveal an interior lined with vials of a familiar looking potion. "Might I interest you four in highly illegal, and incredibly dangerous, forced animagi draughts?"

He might indeed interest them in such a draught. His price was steep - the pleasure of watching them take it and helping them master their forms - but it was a price they happily agreed to. When talk to where and when to do the whole shebang Harry decided not to waste any of time.

"Chamber of Secrets." He decided aloud. "Right now.

They didn't actually do it immediately at his pronouncement as each had errands to run first. Harry had to make a detour to the library to borrow his own bird books back out of the stacks, then he headed back to his dorm room to retrieve the remainder of his own forced animagi draught from that fateful morning weeks ago. Fleur, Cedric and Viktor did the same, returning the the Beauxbatons carriage, Slytherin common room and Hufflepuff common room respectively to retrieve their own vials. Soon enough they were all finished with this task and met up in front of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

After an uncomfortable explanation about the entrance and how it worked they entered so that Harry could hiss a quick '_open_' in parseltongue. Small blessing, Myrtle was missing from her bathroom and they thankfully avoided any conversation with the moody ghost. They did, however, have to deal with Fleur's snooty complaints.

"This pipe eez filthy!" She snarled as she arrived at the bottom of the pipe.

The men present could only shrug and agree. She wasn't wrong, seeing as they were all covered in grime, dirt and an unspecified slime after their trip down the slide and soft landing by way of rat bones. To say nothing of the meter deep pile of dead animals sitting at the bottom of said slide.

"We must clean eet up properly on ze way back out."

"Yes dear." Harry acquiesced without a hint of sarcasm.

Sirius gave him a patronizing look before they continued deeper into the chamber.

* * *

After clearing the cave-in and harvesting the shed skin just beyond - to be used for the creation of wallets for the gentleman and boots for the lady, of course - they were upon the chamber entrance proper. With another hissed '_open_' the vault-like door swung ajar and permitted them passage.

The last two years, it turned out, had not been kind to the basilisk corpse. The bacterial life, not to mention the swarms of rats that pervaded the underground tunnels, had corroborating in picking the corpse clean long ago, leaving nothing behind but a yellowed skeleton. Although the fangs still looked visibly toxic, the black venom preserved within the cartilage.

Remus and Sirius carefully adjusted the skull to close its' mouth in order to use the forehead as a desk to place all of their materials upon. Sirius moved onto transfiguring the pool of water behind the skeleton into a massive wall of reflective ice near the back, thus hiding Slytherin's bald ugly mug, but leaving plenty of water to swim in if need be. As his godfather did this, Harry's quasi-god-father organized the four full vials of navy blue potions, and four half-filled ones. Alongside these he placed the bestiaries, bird dictionaries and a leather bag from which he pulled out food samples. Dried meets, fresh vegetables and sliced fruit exclusively.

"To get accustomed to your new senses of taste and smell." Remus explained at their curious looks. "It's an easier place to start when becoming accustomed to your forms, and more enjoyable. There is a magic in food that transcends words, just as with music, which we will be using during the next physical therapy session."

That was a good euphemism for it. Physical therapy sessions.

"I vill go first." Viktor declared as he approached the skull table and downed the remaining dose of his original vial.

No-one was surprised to witness the rough scales form on his skin, nor the rows of jagged teeth forming in his mouth. They _were_ surprised by the increase in his size as he transformed into a fully grown great white shark, ripping his clothes to shreds in the process. The thirteen-foot monstrosity flopped on the cold stone floor and it quickly became evident that TrionSkin was suffocating to death.

It took all five of them pushing against his mass but they managed to slide him into the water. They had to coax him with stinging hexes to swim, as sharks must keep moving in order to breath, but soon he was swimming circles around the small - for him - pool. Sirius extended the mirror of ice below the water's surface so TrionSkin could admire his reflection during these laps and better get used to swimming with fins as opposed to arms.

Remus took to reading the section on great-whites from their book on Cartilaginous fishes as this went on, telling them every little detail.

This went on for half an hour. Remus and Sirius would give TrionSkin commands by yelling - he was underwater and had a new type of ear entirely - to find out if TrionSkin could still understand them. They would have him attempt to make human-like gestures as a shark. Seeing a great white try to shake its head in the affirmative or negative was certainly odd, and reminded Harry of a trained seal or sea-lion responding to a trainer. The rest of the hour Viktor was under the potion's effects amounted to food tasting, in which they would all toss the small food samples and watch as he majestically leapt out of the water to snatch them from the air. He was a showman, through and through.

They stuck entirely to meat for him, as feeding an aquatic carnivore broccoli might not be great for his health, but soon enough his transformation ended and he reverted to human form, naked.

"Erase that from your brain, that was for only 'Ermione to see." Viktor joked to Fleur as Sirius covered the man with a blanket.

Fleur made a playful motion as if scrubbing her eyes clean with a squeegee, even going so far as to make the sound-effect for it with her mouth. God, Harry was in love with this woman.

Then it was Cedric's turn.

* * *

The potion tasted of midnight dew scrubbed from the leaves of English ivy and soaked in the bark of redwood trees, with just a hint fresh blueberries. On the other hand, the potion _felt_ like being strapped into a torture rack to have your body stretched - but in reverse. In a word, it was painful, and yet Cedric refused to yell out. Viktor had gritted his teeth through it and, by Merlin, so would he.

His limbs shrunk, his body squashed and hair sprouted from strange places, much like puberty but without the inconvenient erections and back acne. That pleasant trade-off came with the painful caveats of sharp claws growing from his fingertips, webbing stretching between them, a paddle jutting from his back side and a... bill? Beavers don't have bills like a duck.

And so PaddleCul fell to the floor, a lot smaller, and a lot stranger than the Castoridae he'd expected to become. So small, in fact, that Viktor was easily able to lift him up off the ground and hold him up to his his disgustingly bearded face.

"I knew it! Noble Platypus. You could be nothing but!" Viktor said as he rubbed his cheeks on Paddlecul's back fur.

On the plus side, Paddlecul got a crash course in becoming accustomed to his heightened sense of smell. On the downside, he got a nose-full of every bit of food Viktor had eaten in the last week and saw fit to save leftovers of on his face. In his desperation he panicked and kicked out with his newly webbed feet and felt something jutting from his heel connect and dig deep into the skin of Viktor's wrist.

* * *

Viktor yelped and dropped PaddleCul back to the ground where he scurried away into the water where the amphibious creature disappeared into its murky depths.

"Hm. I thought the venomwould hurt worse than this." Viktor commented as he held his already swelling wrist up to his face to examine. "No, vait, there it is. Oooooooooowwwwweee."

He moaned in pain and slowly lowered himself to the floor and Harry had to laugh at the complete lack of inflection in the man's voice. But it turned out he wasn't faking, for male Paltypi were indeed venemous. Remus tried to cast myriad of pan relief spells on his wrist, but none worked.

"The platypus is vone of the few magical animals Muggles are aware of, ut their magic is in their venom." Viktor told them. "Extremely painful, cannot be relieved by medicine nor magic. But it is not deadly, I vil be fine."

He then produced a small pocketbook titled "A Magizooligists Guide to the Noble Platypus" from within his jacket pocket and handed it to Remus. Harry was now starting to worry his comrade might be a little _too_ interested in Platypi.

"Male Platypi produce venom in a gland near the barb on their hind legs during late winter, which is their mating season." Remus read aloud.

Oh it was mating season for Cedric wa it? that certainly explained why he and Cho were sneaking off so much more often than before. Cho had even commented to Fleur and Hermione how Cedric had become more, ehem, aggressive during one of their Triple dates. She had meant to whisper it, but Harry overheard anyways. his ears always picked up on girls whispering. When women are loud, tune them out, when they're quiet, pay close attention. It was a good rule Viktor had confided in them in private once.

They repeated the same exercises with PaddeCul as they had with TrionSkin. Trying to give him commands, after coaxing him out of his hiding place, which he obeyed happily. The platypus is an insectivore but they didn't have any bugs on the dinner menu, so they fed him pieces of shrimp which he apparently enjoyed.

It wasn't anywhere near as impressive watching him leap from the water to catch pieces as it was for TrionSkin, but that was mostly because he wasn't coordinated enough in his new form to actually catch it. Some seeker, eh?

They also tested his resistance to the cold, freezing different parts of the pond, and through interrogation and the use of nods Paddlecul confirmed that the colder he was the more comfortable he was, to the point that they cast the _glacius_ charm directly on him and it didn't faze him in the slightest. They concluded his resistance to the cold must have been magical in nature, just as with his venom. to be fair, his fur was very thick and very soft, as they discovered when fleur convinced him to let her pet him. Only her though.

When the hour was up it was Harry's turn and he wasted no time in downing the potion himself.

He screamed. He screamed a lot. It would have been nice if the other two had seen fit to warn him, but instead he was left screaming as his arms twisted into wings, what little body hair he had transfigured into feathers, and the bones of his face fused into a beak.

His screams turned into a continuous squawk as he shrank into his clothes. He was able to swim in Dudley's hand-me-downs before, but now he was drowning in them as he struggled to move his odd limbs. He couldn't see it, but his beak was so very heavy that he could hardly lift his head. An angel saw fit to descend from heaven and rescue him from the sea of cloth and hold him to her small, but lovely chest.

"Oooh, now zat is what I would call a voulge nose." Fleur said as she cradled him.

VoulgeNeb tried to stand on the platform her arms provided but was stymied by his impossibly heavy head and his traitorous desire to remain in her embrace. He gave up the task entirely when she started stroking the feathers on the back of his head. It was a divine sensation and he couldn't stop his tongue from hanging out of his beak like a dog.

"Let's see here." Remus interrupted as he brought one of the bird dictionaries over as Sirius provided a mirror.

Harry recognized himself instantly. The black plumage with white tips, the long, white curved beak and the perfectly crescent horn jutting from it. He was a hornbill.

"An oriental pied hornbill." Remus concluded as he proffered the book for Harry to examine. It was uncomfortable having a hand mirror and dictionary shoved so close to his face, but with the two side-by-side Harry had to admit it looked like a perfect match. with one minor exception.

"Non, his hair is wild and thick like mon boyfriend."

She was right. If you were take Harry Potter's mess of black unruly hair and turned it into feathers that's what VoulgeNeb had. It was so thick, in fact, that you could hardly see the back half of his crescent horn. The pied hornbill, on the other hand, had a perfectly smooth head of foliage. Otherwise they looked identical.

"Hmmm." Remus considered as he withdrew the book. "Maybe a trumpeter hornbill?"

He proffered the book again and, indeed, it had his head of hair. But there was still a problem.

"Ewww, non. Eet's beek eez ugly, Harry's is perfect and white, except for zee lightning bold."

Oh yeah, Harry had a lightning bolt shaped black spot on his horn. Fancy that.

"I vould like to propose he is both." Viktor offered helpfully. "If this trumpeter hornbill were to mate with the oriental pied hornbill, then VoulgeNeb would be the result of their union."

They all accepted that explanation in stride, and then proceeded to argue about his name.

"It looked more like a halberd than a Voulge." Cedric argued.

"A halberd is a voulge, and there are many types." Remus offered.

"Then vhy not call him HalberdNose?" Viktor suggested.

"Because we've already settled on our names, we can't change them now!"

And so their debate raged on. VoulgeNeb let them continue uninterrupted, content to enjoy sitting in Fleur's arms as she fed him berries and stroke his head with a single finger. The physical therapy could wait.

* * *

**Notes:**

I planned to make Cedric a beaver and later have Fleur and Harry buy Viktor a breeding pair of Platypi for his birthday, but I put it up to a vote and you all decided PaddleCul should be a Platypus. You have spoken, and I have obeyed.

No preview for this chapter. It was already two weeks late because of this worldwide crisis getting in the way, and I won't wait a day longer. You all deserve it.

**Reviews:**

**DepthSlicer Wrote:**

First I need to apologize. I saw your story when a few weeks ago and thought it sounded dumb. The I decided to give it a chance and it has become one of my favorites. Second after rereading the curses and your comment about thinking outside the box I am going to throw out a guess that they will subvert the curses by trying to fulfill them on purpose in some way. I feel like breaking the rules in this way would truly be befitting of the Marauders. Even if I'm completely wrong I look forward to what you do with this story.

**Response:**

You have nothing to apologize for.

I skip over stories that have terrible first chapters only to come back later and realize chapters 2-30 are masterpieces and the first chapter was just a hump they had to get over to setup the story, and I as a reader had to get over to enjoy that great story

Can't tell you how many times a description turned me off but I forced myself to click on it anyways and had an okay read, if not an outright great read.

**Darksnider05 Wrote:**

This isn't a middle age culture wizarding society isn't that. Sexism and color based racism isn't something they'd have because of magic. Magic based racism though is something they do have.

**Response:**

Maxime's use of the word negro was used descriptively, not derogatorily. Just a few decades ago this was commonplace in America, and I think it adds personality for French magical society to use outdated terms for things, including ones that might offend the sensibilities of some people. Small things that add up to a real culture shock.

**StormCrownSr Wrote:**

I am confused with the lack of attention this story is receiving.

**Response:**

Are you kidding? This is my most popular story! But feel free to share it with more people.


	8. Chapter 8: Their Diverging Paths

**The Marauding Champions**

* * *

**Chapter 8:**

**Diverging Stories**

* * *

George Weasley woke to a soft swaying motion, as if he were in a rocking cradle. For a moment he entertained the possibility that he was lucid dreaming and reliving a memory from his infanthood, before he opened his eyes to see the familiar red canopy and curtains of his bed in Gryffindor tower. The smell of salt water also dissuaded him of that idea.

He then experienced a brief second of panic at discovering he was deaf and couldn't hear the usual singing of birds outside, until he reached up and discovered a pair of earmuffs. With those removed he was met not only with the beautiful morning serenade of mother nature, but the lapping of water upon wood. If that wasn't enough to set off every prank alarm in his head then the sight of someone peaking through the curtains from the corner of his eye certainly tipped him off.

They retreated as he turned to see them but he was quick in flinging open the curtains to persue them, only to be met with three pairs of curious eyes and the vast length of the black lake stretching to the horizon.

"Er, hello there?" He greeted the mer-children awkwardly.

The small, green, scaly little-girls retreated into the water until they were submerged up to their noses. And with their mouths covered by water the giggles came up through the surface in an eerie echo. All the while their eyes never left his.

One of them mumbled something he couldn't quite catch until he lowered his head over the edge of the water until his ear practically scraped the small, choppy waves. He beckoned for her to repeat herself.

"Can we keep you?" Her voice, muffled by the water, pleaded with all sincerity.

This was getting weird; Fast.

"Keep me? Whatever would the three of you want with a pillock like me?" George asked in his child-talking voice.

They burst into another fit of giggles and he took a moment to examine them. All three had dark hair and the same almond eyes, though they were each slightly different shades of green and one was chubby. The oldest couldn't be more than than seven.

They were also all completely naked, which would make him uncomfortable in any other situation, but with them swimming in the lake they reminded George of a simpler time when Ron and Ginny were their ages and still happy to let their older brothers bathe them. Moreso Ginny than Ron, he was always a pain to coax into the tub.

"We want you so we can play Rescue The Prince properly."

With a bit of encouragement they explained that 'Rescue the Prince" was a game in which one of them would play the prince be tied to a post, a second would play the role of guardian to hide the post and prince(ideally in a dangerous part of the lake) and try to stop the third person from rescuing them within the hour. The prince player would sing to lead the heroin to her blushing husband to be, the guardian would set up obstacles and the heroine had to get to the prince within the hour.

This being George's first foray into mer culture couldn't have been the best introduction.

"Okay... But why me?" He finally asked after learning the rules of the game

"Because, you have the same hair as that beautiful man who was brought down during the task." The chubby one, who had been quiet up until then, admitted.

"He was rescued with the pretty silver birdie by the green-eyed one." A second said.

"We tried to use kelp as wigs, but it just wasn't the right shade of orange red. You would be so much better." A third explained.

Then it all clicked into place.

Apparently his little brother had made quite an impression on the female populace of mer-people within the lake. Which presented a perfect opportunity to escape this potentially dangerous situation.

"I can do you one better." He told them mischievously. "That beautiful man from the task was none other than my youngest brother, and he would be overjoyed to be your prince once again."

He may as well have just delivered them the location of the lost city of Atlantis - a city merfolk were even more obsessed with finding than Muggle or wizard archeologists - for how happy that little offer made them. Now all he had to do was somehow get back to shore and figure out a way to convince(blackmail) one of the tournament organizers(Percy) into coughing up the potion they had used to put the hostages under water. Then it was only a matter of kidnapping his bath-hating twerp of a little brother and delivering him to the scaly heroines.

His conniving thoughts were interrupted as another bed floated into view near his own, not ten feet away.

The sight of his brother laying in it was no surprise. The mermaid laying beside him caressing his hair with a finger did. For a short moment George felt slightly envious at the fact his brother got a full grown maid cooing over him instead of three little ones. But being above water the cooing was more of a clicking sound. It reminded George of that time they snuck out to the cinema to watch a movie about a buff Austrian man fighting some alien hunter in a rainforest. She sounded just like that alien.

On closer inspection Fred was not only awake, but had a smile that was all cheek but no teeth. The kind of smile that projected relaxation and smugness, to the point George was surprised not to hear purring coming from his better half. The only thing lacking from the scene in front of him was for the mermaid to be feeding him grapes.

Thankfully his brother was still fully clothed in his pyjamas.

"You know George." Fred called out to him as he cracked open an eye. "I reckon it might be time to beg the new Marauders for a ceasefire."

George glanced around at the vast length of water surrounding them and the castle far into the distance. They had floated so far downstream that they had nearly exited the lake into the river that drained out to sea. If they'd woken up an hour later their return trip to Hogwarts would have taken an entire day.

"I reckon you might be right, Fred."

* * *

Hermione wandered the room of hidden things in a daze.

She had never been one to believe in fate, or destiny or anything to do with divination really. But this, Marauder Curse and complimentary Rival Curse was very real. Destined to foil one another, and in her case, marry one another.

One one hand Hermione was ecstatic to learn that she was destined to wed her fuzzy boyfriend, that was solidly in the good news. Hell, even a wide-eyed, socially awkward pre-pubescent Hermione fresh off of the Hogwarts express would have taken one look at the curly locks on Viktor's chest and declared_ 'I like that! And I don't even know why yet._' Fortunately Hermione wasn't a preteen schoolgirl, she was deep in the throngs of puberty and the maelstrom of hormones that came with it. As such, she knew _exactly_ why she liked that.

She parsed through the piles of hidden journals and diaries detailing experiments by prior generations of Rivals. They detailed experiments in spell creation, potion invention, ingredient preparation and much much more. Failed experiments outnumbered successful ones 12 to 1, but wasn't that the point of experimenting? If she were in the right frame of mind she would be pouring over them and testing the methodologies of her predecessors with the same fervor with which she would run her fingers through those aforementioned chest curls, if he would only let her.

Sadly, she wasn't in the right frame of mind, why?

The fate of the Marauders.

Harry was doomed to either die at the hand of a fellow Marauder, commit suicide, kill one of them or be estranged from them all. He was probably safe from the terrible fate of marrying her, Viktor was most assuredly condemned to that sticky end, but that was little consolation.

Strangely enough she was pretty sure Harry wasn't in any danger of being killed by a fellow Marauder. But that came with the caveat that the reason she believed such was because all of the other outcomes would hurt him so much worse, or in the case of suicide, seemed so much more likely.

Her wanderings took her to a section of the stadium-sized room that was filled with busts and in-tact furniture for sitting and reading.

The sweet, heart-on-sleeve syndrome boy with the saving-people-thing had lived a hard life. She sometimes caught him staring off into space as his mind dovetailed into that dark, dusty cupboard under the stairs. But it wasn't his tendency to fall into periodic depression that made her concerned for potential suicidal tendencies. No, he was too resilient, and too strong of heart to fall to his own inner demons.

In her apsent-minded rifling of objects she discovered a stash of lost or stolen jewelry and began searching through it for something that suited her. She had enough frame of mind to realize some of it may very well be cursed, and snatched up a piece of silk laying nearby(telling enough, the most ideal material for handling cursed objects) before continuing.

Her reasons for being concerned for potential suicidal tendencies was much simpler. Ending his own life to save another was EXACTLY the kind of thing Harry would do. Images of Harry ripping out his own beating heart to put it into Ron's open chest in the middle of a battlefield, or removing his own head to meet the demands of a Death Eater in exchange for the lives of hostages haunted her as she picked up a lovely silver diadem.

More hauntingly were the other possibilities brought on by this curse.

Logically suicide seemed the obvious choice, but the fact that being forced to kill his lover or friend, or worse, be estranged from them were such worse fates for him to suffer made her feel - not think, feel - that they were more likely. Sometimes reason and evidence budged and made way for superstition informed by experience to take the lead. Fate's tendency to bend Harry Potter over the most uncomfortable surfaces and ream him in the most delicate of orifaces told her that those terrible ends were what awaited her best friend.

"But vut I don't understand is vut the two of you have to do vith this curse." Poliakoff interrupted her musings. "Mister Filch I can understand, you are surely a former rival yourself, but Peeves is a poltergeist. You were never alive to begin with."

The topic was such that it caught Hermione's interest enough to bring her out of her increasingly morbid musings. Lost in her own mind she hadn't even noticed that Poliakoff, Peeves, Filch and Mrs Norris had been following her through the stacks. She tossed aside the silk cloth and myriad of jewelry contained within it and added her own two cents.

"Indeed. Poltergeists are the manifestations of the collective mischief within a place. How are you involved in all of this? Wouldn't you be a companion to the Marauders? The greatest source of mischief in history?"

Both Filch and Peeves grew increasingly wide, and increasingly disquieting grins as she finished phrasing her question.

"You are mistaken, Mister Poliakoff." Filch informed her fellow rival. "I too am a poltergeist, as is Mrs Norris."

Hermione could do nothing more than blink at him

"But, but you're nothing like a poltergeist!" She practically yelled. "You're grumpy, and obsessed with corporal punishment and catching rule breakers!"

"Ah!" Said Peeves, holding up a knowing finger. "But you see, you are also mistaken, but only in your understanding of what a poltergeist is. What you just described is a very particular, and the most common, type of poltergeist. It is as accurate as describing a plant as a living organism incapable of locomotion, green in color, and which reproduces by means of fruiting flowers."

"Meanwhile there are plants whom are red in pigment and reproduce by fragmentation, like certain breeds of algae, or who resemble what Peeves just described save for the lack of flowers, like ferns." Filch explained.

Hermione digested this new information, reworded it and paraphrased it in her mind in as many ways as she could conceive of, and tried to expand on the ideas it brought up.

"So, like Peeves, you are the culmination of some abstract force in the school." She declared, and to which both of the poltergeists nodded. "But instead of mischief you're the rules and the intend behind them made flesh."

Filch clapped and gave her the first genuine smile she had ever seen on his face.

"That is exactly right! Save you missed that I am the misery, shame and resentment of students caught or punished for misdeeds." He expanded.

"What about shame and remorse for the bad deeds?" Poliakoff pressed.

"There has been about enough of those two emotions during all of the detentions in the last ten centuries to fill a thimble." Filch answered with a perfectly straight face. "If even that."

Even Hermione couldn't bring herself to argue against that irrefutable fact.

"And Mrs Norris?" She asked.

"This may seem a little abstract, but she is the nature of tamed and broken animals. The collective domestication of the cats, owls and toads within these walls." Peeves offered.

Now that the cat's nature was pointed out to her she couldn't _unsee_ the chimerism. Those big, yellow, unblinking eyes like lamps in the night could have been plucked from Hedwig's skull and transplanted, and her ability to turn her head at a one hundred and eighty degree angle like an owl. It made sense her appearance would most resemble a cat, the most common pet brought to Hogwarts, and an owl, the second most common. Toads were so rare that Hermione was sure the only way to find any features she shared with the amphibians would be to pet her and check for bumps or warts.

"She has a twin, the hidden and caged wildness and internal feral nature of all the pets in the castle. He usually sleeps all day unless you poke him." Peeves explained. "But BOY is he a riot to be around once poked."

It didn't sound like a being Hermione would like to encounter.

"We keep him locked up in a hidden corridor on the third floor." Filch added. "We used to let him out on the school grounds at night to guard the school. Those were funner days. But he killed one too many students who were out after hours."

Oh... Hermione imagined a giant spirit of a three-headed dog would be a good defense from thieves, wpuld-be-kidnappers and assassins.

"I thought Fluffy belonged to Hagrid?" Hermione pressed.

The three poltergeists all blinked at her in surprise to learn that she knew of Fluffy.

"He might as well." Mrs Norris answered; the sound of her high pitched voice, not to mention the revelation that she COULD speak making both Hermione and Poliakoff jump in surprise. "They met one summer when the students and their pets were away. Without them here both my brother and I revert to much weakened forms. And I assure you, as a puppy the size of a pumpkin my brother does justice to the name Rubeus bequeathed him."

Hermione merely stared at the talking cat. This new information could be registered and filed at a later date.

"He thought the poor thing was an actual Cerberus pup that a student smuggled into the castle and abandoned. They bonded instantly, and the lovable oath has come closer to taming him than any other person in history." Norris continued. "But then again, nobody else has ever tried. Albus had to train Rubeus in lying in order to tell that higswallop about him buying it from a Greacian. All subsequent attempts to teach Hagrid how to lie have met with failure."

Okay, the novelty of a talking Mrs Norris had worn off. Information registered. Avalanche of questions incoming.

"How many poltergeists are there!?" She gasped.

"Hundreds." Peeves explained simply. "Some of them take the form of objects or live within portraits. Many pretend to be ghosts, like professor Binns."

That one she had to think about... Right. Ghosts can't pickup chalk and write on a blackboard, nor pick up a book and drone on about it.

"Academic boredome personified?" She asked.

"Academic boredome plain and simple." Filch answered.

Now Hermione couldn't stop thinking about all of the possible poltergeists within the castle. From that one time she saw the ghost of a witch pick up book to read it, to how Sir Cadogen always seemed to make people more lost than they were before asking him for help.

Then there were the implications of poltergeists outside of Hogwarts. Were there beings born of the collective ideals and abstract philosophies of the entire human race? Love, lust, justice... Death? Such beings formed of the collective views and experiences of natural phenomina or strange ideas would be, simply put, gods. With a lowercase g, of course.

But then again, if belief in God with an uppercase G became as widespread as the belief in death - that is to say, truly universal - then would humanities collective belief in him make him so? Then again, it doesn't require all of humanities belief to make it real, if these god poltergeists already exist, and they surely do, then would everyone see their effects?

Then she thought about it further, and realized that they do. The Christians, synonymous with Europeans, who believe in a god that is universally good and loving, and whose ethics apply to everyone regardless of race, creed or position in life. As such it was and is within Christian and European societies that science, medicine, universal human rights and economic prosperity developed and prospered. The Hindus believe in a god that cherishes even the most humble of lifestyles, and as such they live in peace and with purpose even within poverty. On the other end there are the Muslims who worship a god they outright call "The Great Deceiver" who cherishes war and madness... Yeah, that definitely pans out. All gods are real, for good or Ill.

This certainly paints religious wars of the past in a new light.

And so her meloncholy at the news of Harry's potential fates vanished and she was finally able to properly take in the grandeur of the room of hidden things, making notes in her own journal regarding her thoughts as she did so. The following hour was filled with nothing but the sound of Hermione and Poliakoff rummaging through long forgotten briefcases of former Rivals and the turning of pages as they scoured their books.

"Our predecessors." Poliakoff eventually asked. "Did they really make all of this? Were some of them carpenters, or tailors?"

There were an unimaginable amount of clothes and furniture in here. Not to mentioned textbooks that seemed to be barely used and lacking in the usual notes and alterations of people like the Half-Blood Prince and his companion Nucifera, or others with less rediculous nicknamed like the duo "Bumblebee and Heidrun."

"The house-elves use the place too, mostly to discard of destroyed furniture, tapestries or unclaimed lost and found." Filch explained.

Poliakoff nodded at the explanation.

"I suppose that explains vhy I keep finding obviously sentimental photos and objects that I cannot imagine people throwing avay." Poliakoff muttered as he rifled through some photos.

Hermione had noticed that too, but shrugged it off.

"Oh no, most of those are the belongings of people who died and did not have next of kin to take ownership of it." Norris corrected. "The piles of paraphernalia tend to expand rapidly during times of war or famine."

Well that sobered her good mood. Poliakoff quite literally shook off the chill and pushed on into a change of subject.

"So, explain to us vut it is we must do?"

Peeves shrugged.

"Invent and innovate. Name any great inventor or innovator in British history, and odds are you will find a Rangers like yourselves." Norris said.

"Ranger?" Hermione prodded.

"Yes. That is what you are called. A foil to the Marauder's, who themselves are the foil to the authority of teachers and faculty. The possibility of those in power abusing that power made the Marauders necessary. But the question must be asked, who watches the watchers?" Mrs Norris continued. "And the answer, is you."

Oh that was such a beautiful turn of phrase. Hermione wrote that down.

"Anti-cheating quils?" Poliakoff asked.

"Invented by a Ranger. Improved by a Ranger. Improved by another Ranger. Improved again by another Ranger. Improved **again** by another ranger..." Peeves prattled on.

Hermione ignored him and pressed on.

"Sneakoscope?" She asked

"Edgar Stroulgar. Ranger." Filch confirmed.

"Volvesbane potion?" Asked poliakoff.

"Domacles Belby, Ranger." Mrs Norris confirmed.

"I find myself salivating at the chance to read their notes on the process they went through to invent these things." Hermione confessed.

Filch raised his arms and indicated the room of junk around them.

"Look around. It's all here. Part of your responsibility as a ranger is to leave your legacy behind for future generations." Filch said.

"And as for the foiling of the Marauders? Who are they, vat are they?" Poliakoff asked.

Oh right, he wasn't in on that.

"Harry Potter, Fleur Delacour, Cedric Diggory and Viktor Krum. Pranksters and Animagi. The previous generation was Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs." Hermione answered. "I'll explain later, for now I want to know what we're supposed to do to oppose them."

"Simple. Prank them. Keep the pranksters humble, lest they become too brazen and thus dangerous in their schemes." Mrs Norris explained. She turned her attention from Hermione to Poliakoff. "You must be extremely careful not to reveal your existence to them. When Marauders and Rangers war the results can be dangerous. They have likely already realized that either Miss Granger or Miss Chang will be one by simple deduction, but you will be safe from too vacuous of retaliation due to your relationship with Mr Krum."

Poliakoff gave an exaggerated shiver.

"I feel strongly inadequate and ill-equipped to the task of matching the skill, brilliance, luck and perseverance of that quartet." He confessed. "Even with the help of Miss Granger. How are just two of us supposed to match the Katru-vizard Champions?"

Peeves gave a loud whoop and a laugh.

"Oh silly boy, you two are not just two! You are legion!" He screamed to the ceiling. "The castle is your ally, and the knowledge of a two thousand prior Rangers are at your beck and call!"

The chamber rumbled with his booming voice and several piles of junk came tumbling down from the force of his voice alone.

Somebody make Peeves a Quidditch mascot, because good God did he know how to give a pep talk!

"Then let us get to vork!" Poliakoff announced. "We must be ready to foil them in whatever scheme they are no doubt concocting at this very moment!"

* * *

"Look out!"

Sirius' warning came too late as the latest ball of blue flame singed right through Viktor's thick, Hungarian jacket. Harry and Cedric had the frame of mind to blast him with their fire extinguishers, as provided by Remus Lupin for this little game.

You see, Harry, Cedric and Viktor were on one team, armed with fire extinguishers. Their opponent? A fire-weilding, fully-trabsformed Veela. The goal? To extinquish the balls of flesh-melting flames before they melted the flesh off of their faces.

The potion had worked on his girlfriend in ways they couldn't have imagined. The wings jutting from her back, the feathers covering every orifice of her body, and the fires of hell itself she summoned into her hands and breathed through her nostrils were all so very impressive. Most would see her and be filled with terror. Harry thought she looked hotter than she'd ever been before. Both figuritively, and _very_ literally.

Fleur, in her majestic, transformed state, screeched yet again and flung a pair of fire balls directly at Harry himself. Two quick squeezes of the handle later and those flames were quenched by the thick foam that erupted from the nozzle.

It is widely said that those who play stupid games win stupid prises. Harry wondered what people who lost stupid games get?

Harry wouldn't know. He was winning.

* * *

**Notes and Apology:**

I feel so ashamed. This chapter took a grand total of **five hours** to write and edit. Cumulatively. I could give you all of the excuses in the world. About how the pandemic got in the way, how I had to get a full-time job working manual labor during this crisis of idiocy and was left exhausted and unmotivated.

But the fact of the matter is, I have been a lazy shit and just writing one hour a day I would have been able to finish this chapter months ago. Well I'm now typing for two hours every day, sometimes more, despite 8 hr a day spent studying or working. Expect much more consistent writing from me people. I'm no longer a slave to my muse, she MY bitch now.

**Reviews:**

**stevefocus Wrote:**

I like this story but their marauder names are so bad every time I read them I laugh, how much did you drink before deciding on them

**Response**:

I have an impossibly high alcohol tolerance. I don't drink as a result, because most of it tastes like crap and I can't even get drunk. I'm sick before I'm tipsy. Viktor on the other hand? He was high as a kite when he came up with the nicknames.

**H Max Marius**** Wrote**:

Harry Turns to Victor, "Hey, where's Cedric?"

Meanwhile, Fleur and her Fireside Girls (Hermione and Cho) are all cooing over his plush pelt

**Response**:

I had to Google who the fireside girls were and then it took me a few minutes to figure out what Phineas and Ferb had to do with Cedric and company. Please understand, I'm 27 years old as of yesterday(Yes, I finished this chapter on my birthday. You're welcome) so Phineas and Ferb were juuuuust after my time.

**MavtheMustang Wrote:**

What is it with authors allowing cunts to take whatever the fuck they want from guys with no repercussions? Seriously, enough of that shit.

**Response**:

I'm usually more eloquent than this, but the only response I can muster to your review is "What!?"

Seriously, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Could you please elaborate?


	9. Chapter 9: Relationship Troubles Part 1

**The Marauding Champions**

* * *

**Chapter 9:**

**Relationship Troubles**

* * *

The next week started with an omen of great portent and ill-fortune. This omen came not in the form of tea leaf reading, crystal ball gazing or even more superstitious signs like a cracked mug or McGonnigal crossing his path while transformed, after he walked through a broken mirror, under a ladder and spilling an entire bag of salt on top of her after curfew.

Nay, his forewarning - which in most cases he would be overjoyed to receive ahead of time_ for a change_ \- came from a conversation with his girlfriend.

His Monday had started off beautifully. The frozen morning dew and grass crunched beneath his feet as he went to the Bauxbatons carriage; intent on meeting Fleur there so they could walk to breakfast together. This had been their usual morning routine for some time now.

They walked arm in arm up to the castle, breathing in the delicious mountain air with the scent of an oncoming drizzle when it happened. Fleur, radient with the usual glowing blush, turned to look him in the eye and took a deep breath. He expected she was going to say something momentous, maybe put into words the maelstrom of emotions they'd been feeling for one another in a simple three word confession that he himself lacked the courage to say.

"I'm hormonal today."**(A/N-0)**

It took him several moments to break from the draw of her wide, deep blue eyes and properly register what she had said.

Oh... Oh! Oooooooooooh... Oh shit.

Harry passed on her gracious warning to Viktor and Cedric. Good thing too, because otherwise they probably wouldn't have noticed her partially transforming in public in time to cover it up on any of the occasions it had happened.

Pain aux raisin overcooked and too dry to eat? Well it was _really_ overcooked after It erupted into flames in her suddenly clawed hands. Only a few curious students were close enough to have seen it, and they chalked it up to an impressive display of wandless magic - a story they decided to run with.

Later that day a pair of seventh year Hufflepuff girls almost earned themselves a case of hot butt when they passed Fleur and Harry in the hall and whispered something snide to his emotionally compromised girlfriend. He didn't quite catch it, but it may have had something to do with her nonexistent chest - which he himself adored seeing as it was a natural consequence of being as lithe as she was, but which she was rather self-conscious about.

Their backs were turned so they didn't see what kind of reaction their comments got. But Harry didd. He dealt with it by yanking Fleur into a cavity behind the ever-ubiquitous suits of armour and dousing her with an aguamenti charm before she could let loose a fireball. That definitely didn't improve her mood towards him.

Tuesday didn't fare much better.

It seemed to start off great when he greeted her with a bear hug and she melted into him.

"Hmmmm. Soft." He sighed into her hair.

For some reason the French woman translated the English word "soft" into the french word "gros" and spent the rest of the day moping about how her boyfriend apparently considered her to be heavyset. Husky, even. Rotund, if you prefer. How the impossibly petite girl could think anyone would think her fat was beyond Harry, but at this point he was also sick and tired of walking on eggshells so he sent her off to bed that night with another hug.

"Hmmm. Hard." **(A/N-1)**

Meanwhile Harry, Viktor and Cedric were having the opposite problem to Fleur's.

While she was having a hard time keeping from transforming against her will, they were having difficulty transforming at all. Viktor was doing significantly better than him or Cedric. He could already partially transform on his own, namely his head, without wanded help. Which was a huge improvement from the second task, when he had needed a wand.

Harry and Cedric, on the other hand, had to put up with Remus and Sirius recreating "Malfoy the Dancing Ferret" but with a platypus and hornbill instead.

"The goal here is to get accustomed to the sensation of transforming back and forth, until you can do it yourself." Lupin had explained. "It's like teaching a child to walk by manually holding them up and moving their legs until the muscle memory sets in."

Harry sincerely doubted the process Remus just described was anywhere near as painful for an infant as this was for them. And at the end of the hour of "training" Sirius went right back to writing at the makeshift desk he'd made out of the basilisks skull.

"What're you up to, dogfather of mine?"

He hid whatever papers he was working on before dismissively, and obviously, lying to him.

"Oh you know. Spent thirteen plus years without writing. Calligraphy skills have degraded some. It's shameful that my handriting is worse than your chicken scratch. And yes, I do get copies of your classwork and I do care about your grades kiddo. You _need_ to work on your penmanship.

Harry was so touched, and slightly ashamed, by the truthfulness of the last part of that statement that he didn't have it in him to call the prematurely old man out on the lie.

* * *

Come Wednesday morning he had set it as his mission to poke the dragon until she exploded and got all the moodiness out of her system.

Speaking of Moody, he was finally back from his leave of absence. Good thing too, because Harry doubted any of them could tolerate another lecture on proactive safety and preventative self-defense from Dumbledore.

It was certainly useful to be able to recognize agressive body language, postures indicating somebody may be reaching for or concealing a weapon, how to do cavity searches and how to de-escalate tesnsions before a fight broke out. It was even more useful to know the thirteen leading causes of death, habits to protect yourself from them(from diet and exercise to a full three days of workplace safety classes). But it was also incredibly **boring!**

Mad-eye, on the other hand, was anything but boring. Not least of which was because of his change in appearance.

He was missing fistfulls of hair, had bloodshot eyes, or erm, eye(seeing as they had stolen the other one where an eyepatch now covered) and had lost a lot of weight. Honestly he looked like he'd been locked inside of a dark place for several months with little to eat or drink only to be released and mauled by Aunt Marge's prize bulldog; An experience Harry was intimately familiar with.

... What the hell had they done to him? And where the hell had Ron disappeared to?! Nobody had seen the bath-hating twerp since Monday.

Questions for later. For now he had a letter to compose to little Gabby to implore her on advice for how to terrorize her older clone. His difficulty was in wording the request in an innocent way so as to coax her into revealing her secrets of her own volition.

He settled for inviting her for lunch to ask for advice on his situation.

Turns out, as a Hogwarts champion he was legally recognized as an adult for so long as the tournament continued. A little factoid nobody had thought to tell him until Hermione offhandedly suggested that may be the case. Her suggestion that he could remain a legal adult after the tournament should he get married - as he was legally allowed to consent to marriage - remained always lodged in the back of his mind.

So now, like all of-age students, he could leave Hogwarts at any time he felt like it. And through the front door instead of the back, side, subterranean, sub-sub terranian or attic exits. He could just walk to Hogsmeade. Whenever he wanted. Even after curfew.

Life was good.

And thus he found himself meeting Gabrielle and Apolline Delacour. Both were dressed in white dresses over black cotton turtlenecks and full leg stockings. His maybe one day future sister and mother in law looked warm, inviting and adorable in their matching outfits.

"Bonjour 'arry!" Little Gabby greeted enthusiastically, bouncing on her heels.

"A pleasure to finally meet you Mister Potter." Apolline greeted without a hint of an accent before proffering a limp hand.

Harry took it hesitantly and shook it lightly, before awkwardly letting go. Her warm aura hardened and she agressively offered her hand a second time, as if demanding he do it properly. So he did, this time shyly planting a kiss on her knuckle.

He was rewarded with a nod of approval, and he hated himself for the small sense of pride he got from it.

"Would you like to join Gabrielle and I for lunch?" He asked properly

"I would be overjoyed. Please, lead the way." She accepted, taking his elbow in one hand and Gabrielle's hand in the other.

Having the refined woman hold onto his elbow as he walked her to the three broomsticks was an experience he had no reference for. The closest he'd come, at least in how the situation made him feel, was when he had danced with Padma at the Yule ball. He felt an odd sort of pride, as if he were refined himself by doing so. How odd that such a simple act could make him feel more like a man.

There! That's what it was. It made him feel masculine. Grown up, even.

He had the frame of mind to hold the door open for the ladies as they entered and Appoline let go of him to walk to the table. But when he sat down both remained standing. Apolline with a raised eyebrow and expectant look on her face.

"What?" He asked dumbly.

She glanced at her chair then back to staring him in the eye.

"Oh!" Said Harry in realization.

He stood back up from his seat and pulled Apolline's chair out for her, pushing her back in once she sat and thanked him. Repeating the action for Gabrielle illicited what might have been a "thank you" in French, but it was hard to tell over all the giggling. Once they were both tucked in he returned to his own seat; just in time for a third beautiful blonde, Madame Rosmerta, to arrive with a couple menus she handed out, along with the morning's newspaper.

Apolline took the newspaper and busied herself with reading it in place of perusing the menu. Gabrielle entertained herself by swinging her feet and glancing around at the rustic decorations and Scottish guests of the establishment with a look of wonder.

Harry was no stranger to awkward silences, but for once it didn't seem to be his fault

"Er. Are you two going to order anything?"

Apolline made a lady-like snort and glanced up from whatever article she had been reading.

"You invited us here, Mister Potter. We are your guests. What's more, you are the man here and in both cases that means it is up to you to order for us." She informed him.

Harry had a sudden mental image of Apolline training a dog to have proper table manners. The Marauder in him wanted to rebel against his maybe-future-mother-in-law and show her what trying to train him against his will could earn her... But the gentleman in him, the part that was falling in love with this woman's daughter and wanted to make every effort to make his entire potential family happy, refused to let the Marauder run wild just yet

"Okay. I'll do that." He concluded.

He began looking the two over and trying to will the knowledge of what they would like out of their minds and into his own. Was it proper for him to order for them because it showed he was trying to be considerate of them, or to test his ability to read people? He knew the Delacours were wealthy in a new money sort of way, but for the life of him he couldn't recall what Fleur had said the family business was.

"They still haven't found who robbed the Knight Bus." She said suddenly.

... That was certainly one way to break him out of his thoughts

"Somebody robbed the Knight Bus!?" He asked, letting his surprise show in his voice.

"Oh yes. Well over a month ago now. The day after you saved my more prescious daughter from the Mer. Or perhaps that same evening?"

Harry knew from long experience to never believe in coincidences. And he didn't miss the fact that this would have correlated to the night of the Marauder's rebirth.

"What did they take?" He asked curiously.

"The engine."

"The engine?"

"The engine."

Harry tried to digest that. The next question didn't even finish exiting his mouth before Mrs Delacour answered.

"Why.."

"The knight bus is a world-wide franchise. The engine and it's enchantments allow it to travel at speeds unmatched by any comparable vehicle, and the means by which the double deckers make other vehicles, buildings and trees jump out of the way is a trade secret." Apolline explained. "So naturally the whole world is fascinated by who could have taken it. And how."

Hmmm. He was starting to get the picture.

Funny, he had come out here expecting to get dirt in his aggressively sensitive girlfriend, but instead he solved the mystery as to how they managed to get the Durmstrang ship up and down two entire mountains through a forest.

"Do they have any suspects?"

"You mean aside from the mysterious man they discovered locked inside of the hole where the engine used to be?" Apolline goaded.

Harry shook his head.

"None. And the authorities refuse to share the mystery man's identity with the public. Perhaps he was put there by whomever stole the engine.?" She sighed wearily and put the newspaper down. "Very dark signs. First the world cup, then the debacle of this tournament, and now a kidnapping of what must be a high profile individual and theft of a highly dangerous magical artifact."

She locked eyes with Harry and spoke with utter sincerity and concern.

"I hope you can recognize these signs and what they mean. I hope you can foresee the coming dark times that many with their ears to the ground are muttering about in shady corners and smoky meetings all over the wizarding world."

It took all of Harry's self-control not to break down laughing at how serious she delivered that line.

The Death Eaters at the world cup and him being forced into the tournament, sure. But were people really taking their pranks as signs that Voldemort's forces were congregating and making terrible schemes? It would be hilarious if it wasn't making people he cared about worry needlessly for him. Because he knew exactly who stole the engine, exactly who was shoved into the engine cavity(and swore to himself that they would make it up to the retired Auror) and had a strong hunch as to the location of the engine.

"I'm already as on edge as I can be ma'am." He told her. "Most of the time at least. And I have good friends and better mentors looking out for me. But thank you."

It was then that Rosmerta returned.

"What can can I get for yous?" She asked.

"I'll have a warm eggnog Butterbeer, little Gabrielle will have a hot apple cider - the sugary kind from a packet not the fermented variety - and Apolline will be having passion fruit tea with a bit of rose wine added."

Apolline gave him that same expression of approval, with those eyebrows raised and a smirk teasing her lips.

He ignored the pride in his chest and pressed forward.

"Fleur and I are having problems lately." He confessed. "No matter what I do or say she just gets angry. She warned me earlier this week that she was feeling 'hormonal' but I can't help but feel I'm doing this boyfriend thing wrong. Can you two provide me any advice on making her feel better? Or maybe what not to do."

Apolline nodded graceously to every word and waited for him to finish, and once he had she leaned back in her chair and thought about it.

"You should know that Fleur is a woman. As such sometimes there is no right answer to her mood, and no matter what you say or do she will only get angrier. Because she _wants_ to be angry." Apolline explained. "Your job, as a man, is to treat her like the brat she is pretending to be, and be magnanimous or flirtatious as you do so. Poke the sleeping dragon, as it were."

That answer threw Harry through a loop. It sounded more like the kind of answer a playboy advising him on how to get laid - IE, Sirius - would give, not the mother of the woman in question. Then he reminded himself - Veela. And not just any Veela, but a Veela mother who was in his corner, if Gabrielle's letter could be believed.

"That was... Shockingly honest advice. Usually girls would say to do nonsense like bring her flowers or supplicate to her." Harry said/asked skeptically

"Pshah!" Apolline responded with a dismissing wave. "She chose you to be her man, not a little boy. Do not treat her as if she were your muzzer. Despite the self-serving advice many girls will give you about being sensitive and supplicative, that is not the kind of behavior in a man that makes us love him. You are supposed to be a source of stability and calm, especially in times of turmoil; even if zat turmoil is all in our heads or hearts. When we misbehave, which we do even when we know we should not, you keep acting with maturity and magnanimity. With a little teasing thrown in, of course. Do this and we will come around with an apology eventually."

Harry found himself wishing for his own quick-quotes quill to keep track of all this. If for no other reason that to share with Sirius for his input... And maybe to take hilariously misquoted notes during potions class. Yeah, definitely the latter.

"I've been doing that just fine, well except for the teasing part. I only did that once, and it was because I lost my patience. I felt bad afterwards." He said.

Rosmerta returned with their drinks and from there Harry explained how Fleur had insinuated fat from soft and how he'd called her hard.

"_Vous a-t-elle frappé_?" Gabrielle asked, confirming Harry's suspicion that she understood a lot more of what was being said than her aloof, hyperactive demeanor would suggest.

"Uh, she made a lot of motions against my body with her fists that I think were _intended_ to be punches, but felt like kisses. I do think she loves me so." Harry answered with a knowing smirk, much to Gabrielle's giggling pleasure.

From there the conversation fizzled out to discussing food and drinks Fleur liked and how to prepare them, along with ways to impress her and her father - who was as yet unaware of their dating. All of it was great ammo to be saved for a later date. At one point she even conjured a hugely complicated set of forks, spoons, knives and mock dishes so she could teach him proper etiquette for fine dining**(A/N-2)** but from there it devolved into Harry and Gabrielle having a tea party with burlap dolls he conjured for such a purpose.

At that point Apolline threw her hands up in the universal gesture of surrender and contented herself with watching them play.

It was funny, Harry thought. He had come here today hoping to learn how to be a worse boyfriend, but instead learned how to be a much better gentleman. It was information that he couldn't wait to completely disregard in favor of being ungentlemanly for the rest of his life.

As their play date ended Harry walked them back to the floo at the Hogsmeade train station where Gabrielle pleaded to be picked up for a hug. It was as he relented that she whispered conspiratorially in his ear.

"When Fleur is being mean I buy her lots of sweets. When she eats them make a comment on how her dress fits and she'll cry."

... Harry lowered the little girl back onto the ground and slowly backed away from her. The question "why would you udo something so mean?" was on the tip of his tongue when he noticed the - rather convincing - look of innocence she wore

Oh... Oh! Ohhhhhhhh... Oh shit.

"Gentlemanly magnanimity it is." He mumbled to himself.

"What was that Harry?" Apolline asked.

"Nothing. Just came to the decision to skip the teasing and be supportive until the storm blows over."

"Hmm. I still stand by my earlier advice. Poke ze dragon. If only a leetle." She gave him a flattering wink, took Gabrielle by the hand and walked to the floo where they disappeared in a flash of green flame.

* * *

**Authors Notes**:

There were going to be five more scenes in this chapter but I had already decided to publish by today and knew it wouldn't be finished, so I'm splitting this chapter up into two parts.

**A/N - 0:** I will give one free spoiler to whoever knows where I stole this line from. Only the first person though.

**A/N -1:** This entire scenario, of correlating soft to fat, is an actual experience I had with my most recent gf. And I handled it the same way. Got a lot of laughs. And all of the relationship advice I've given here has held true in my experience. Take the rough patch with distinction, maturity and a spot of teasing, and she'll be all apologies and kisses when the Aunt Flow leaves.

Trust me. I'm a random guy on the internet, so I know what I'm talking about.

**A/N-2** : I highly recommend taking a few hours out of your life to learn basic etiquette. If you have large family dinners try to do them properly every now and then. Dress up for it like americans used to and eat with the rules of etiquette. You may find that it's beautiful and makes you feel more disciplined. Makes you feel rich in ways that have nothing to do with money.


	10. Discord

**DISCORD**!

**I HAVE A DISCORD! JOIN IT!**

I have a channel where I post updates and hold discussions on each of my stories.

I have media section for discussing nerdy topics from Comic books to Weebery

I even have a fitness and health section for all of us to post our fitness goals, and a meme section.

Here's the invite link:

**UQfd5nY**

The channel name is NonsensicalRants, which is also my new updated penname on here.

That is all.


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